


Come Stumbling In

by larkscape



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angry Pining, Denial of Feelings, Developing Friendships, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hot Springs & Onsen, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, World Figure Skating Championships, accidental flirting via whatsapp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29226225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkscape/pseuds/larkscape
Summary: Yuri sends a dinner table selfie with Yakov and Lilia scowling in the background behind his smirking face.[Sent 19:06]they hate sns even more than you do[Received 19:07]I don’t hate sns, I just don’t have much use for it[Sent 19:07]liar. send me photos! you never post photos, your insta is sad and emptyIn response, Otabek sends a spectacularly poorly-lit view of the corner of his living room, and either he’s fucking with Yuri on purpose or he’s justthat badat photography. It’s kind of amazing, either way.Yuri learns how to be friends. Then he learns — against his will, thanks — how to have a crush. Then he learns that seeing your crush in your own damn shirt is a one-way ticket to a heart attack.He never asked for this.
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 41
Kudos: 163





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired entirely by that official art of Otabek and Yuri at Yuutopia wearing matching tiger shirts under their yukata. (This was supposed to be a pwp. Then I found myself 25K deep in feelings. What happened.)
> 
> This fucker took way too long to write, but it’s finally complete. There are five chapters in total and I’ll be updating Tuesdays and Fridays. Enjoy!

> **Otabek Altin**
> 
> [Sent 10:52]  
>  this airport is a disaster
> 
> [Sent 10:52]  
>  hope they havent lost my bags again
> 
> [Received 10:53]  
>  Does that happen often? I don’t usually have an issue flying in Russia
> 
> [Sent 10:53]  
>  its just this airport
> 
> [Sent 10:54]  
>  theyve lost my bags more than theyve kept them

As soon as the GPF ends and they part ways in Barcelona, Yuri starts badgering Otabek through text. It might be too much — how is Yuri to know? He’s never had a friend like this — but from the moment he touched down in St. Petersburg, he hasn’t stopped.

“I just thought we were alike,” Otabek had said. So Yuri is taking him at his word.

They’re not totally alike, though; Yuri is on instagram all the time while Otabek’s insta is barren. Who cares, though? Otabek set himself up for this when he asked Yuri to be friends. He must have known what he was getting into. Yuri isn’t entirely sure _how_ to be friends, but the internet has taught him that if you give someone photos of your life, they’ll feel included. (Sometimes too much so, but he doesn’t think Otabek’s the type to take liberties like some of Yuri’s more dedicated followers. Otabek seems like the type that needs to be lured out a bit.)

And so the first thing he does when he gets through his front door is to start in with texting carefully framed shots of Potya. All cats are photogenic by nature, but Potya is especially so. Otabek apparently agrees, if the ‘She’s beautiful’ text Yuri receives is anything to judge by.

Later that evening, Yuri sends a dinner table selfie with Yakov and Lilia scowling in the background behind his smirking face.

> **Otabek Altin**
> 
> [Sent 19:06]  
>  they hate sns even more than you do
> 
> [Received 19:07]  
>  I don’t hate sns, I just don’t have much use for it
> 
> [Sent 19:07]  
>  liar. send me photos! you never post photos, your insta is sad and empty

In response, Otabek sends a spectacularly poorly-lit view of the corner of his living room, and either he’s fucking with Yuri on purpose or he’s just _that bad_ at photography. It’s kind of amazing, either way.

By the third time it happens — ‘show me your apartment, i wanna know where you live,’ Yuri texts a couple days later, to which Otabek responds with a clean shot of his kitchen and a heavily motion-blurred shot of his bedroom — Yuri is starting to realize that Otabek is almost definitely fucking with him. Maybe he does it to a lot of people, though, because all the photos on his sparsely-populated public account are taken by someone else; there’s something deeply amusing about the thought of Otabek actually being a good photographer but convincing everyone around him otherwise. Yuri knows he has a private account, too. Maybe that’s where all the good pictures go?

‘pets?’ Yuri asks.

‘I have a cat’

The photo that follows is good quality, possibly due to the subject matter, but definitely providing fuel for Yuri’s little photography theory: it shows a Himalayan mix loafed on a dark-colored sofa, majestic in the single bar of sunlight coming through the window with his big snowshoe-tufted paws tucked under his chest.

‘His name is Oberon,’ the following text reads.

Yuri approves.

> **Otabek Altin**
> 
> [Sent 13:34]  
>  im watching the livestream of the kazakhstan nationals
> 
> [Sent 14:06]  
>  davai 👍
> 
> [Sent 14:11]  
>  omg you were awesome! height on that toe loop combo was fucking amazing 🔥
> 
> [Received 14:17]  
>  Thank you. It felt like the best I’ve performed that jump all season
> 
> [Sent 14:17]  
>  looked like it too
> 
> [Sent 14:17]  
>  youre getting gold for sure, youre way better than everyone else
> 
> [Received 14:19]  
>  We’ll see in the free skate. Mikhail had a strong program today
> 
> [Sent 14:19]  
>  nope im calling it now, youre getting gold
> 
> [Sent 14:19]  
>  scores dont lie and thats gonna be a damn good score
> 
> [Sent 14:21]  
>  whatd i say? 😁😁😁 thats almost a new personal best, right?
> 
> [Received 14:22]  
>  .2 points shy, yes. So close
> 
> [Sent 15:27]  
>  see i told u! GOLD 🥇 they dont call u hero of kazakhstan for nothing
> 
> [Sent 15:27]  
>  congrats 👍👏
> 
> [Received 15:28]  
>  Thanks. Gold feels good after the GPF
> 
> [Sent 15:28]  
>  you were fucking ROBBED at the gpf
> 
> [Sent 15:28]  
>  jj is a shithead and they always overscore him, you deserved to medal way more than he did
> 
> [Received 15:29]  
>  Hey now, he does have talent
> 
> [Sent 15:29]  
>  he has quads and ego, thats what he has
> 
> [Received 15:30]  
>  Okay, I’ll give you that
> 
> [Sent 15:30]  
>  hey you better be at worlds
> 
> [Received 15:31]  
>  I wouldn’t miss it. I’ll see you there
> 
> [Sent 15:31]  
>  damn right

Yuri doesn’t care that there’s still 4CC and Europeans standing between them and the World Championships, doesn’t care how stiff the competition is. He’s holding Otabek to that promise.

Yuri is unreasonably nervous about this whole ‘friends’ thing, and he knows it’s unreasonable, but he’s never had a friend before. Not like this.

He considers asking Victor for advice, but quickly discards the idea. He can imagine just how the conversation would go: _Hey Victor, how do you be friends with someone?_ would be met with way too much enthusiasm and teasing. _Oh, little Yurio is a real boy now! He made a friend! Do you have matching bracelets?_ Nope, that conversation is not happening.

Maybe Georgi? No, he’s still pining over Anya. Yuri does not need to spend yet another night with Georgi’s stupid hair gel melting into the shoulder of his shirt. The stains still haven’t come out from the first three times.

Victor is useless. Georgi is useless. Yakov is definitely out; his preferred method of interaction is yelling at people, and Yuri is already quite proficient in that without any additional coaching.

Maybe he should ask Mila. She’s at least got her head screwed on right, most of the time.

She laughs at him.

“Oh, Yura,” she wheezes, bent over on the ice, “the things that come out of your mouth. You are the tiniest, angriest kitten. ‘How do you be friends with someone,’ _honestly.”_

Yuri did nothing to deserve this abuse. He glowers at her, which sets off another round of cackles. He almost storms away, but… he really could use the guidance. There’s a reason he asked her, after all: loath as he is to admit it, Mila gives good advice when she’s not being an asshole.

His patience has limits, though. “Are you going to tell me something useful or not?”

“Yura, Yura, Yura,” she says, shaking her head. “ _Talk_ to him. Ask about his day, tell him about yours.”

“Then all we’d talk about is skating.”

“So make jokes. You two seemed to be doing fine in Barcelona; what did you talk about there?”

“None of your business, hag! I don’t know why I bothered—”

“Yurochka,” she cuts off his rant with a tolerant smile. “You’re making too much of this. Just make conversation. Send him the dumb pictures you always send me. Everything will be fine.”

Yuri feels himself flushing at the reassurance and glares to cover it.

Mila ruffles his hair.

_“Get off me!”_

> **Otabek Altin**
> 
> [Received 15:36]  
>  [photo: Himalayan mix cat stretching on his side, one paw extended with claws spread, mid-yawn]
> 
> [Sent 15:38]  
>  omg hes so cute! 👍😺❤️
> 
> [Received 15:40]  
>  He just attacked my foot
> 
> [Sent 15:41]  
>  youre making the hilarious grumpy face, arent you?
> 
> [Received 15:41]  
>  …
> 
> [Received 15:41]  
>  My *foot.*
> 
> [Sent 15:42]  
>  hed get along perfect with potya, thats her favorite game
> 
> [Sent 15:42]  
>  and theyre cuter when they attack feet
> 
> [Received 15:42]  
>  True
> 
> [Sent 15:43]  
>  did you poke him? i bet you poked him with your foot
> 
> [Received 15:43]  
>  No comment
> 
> [Sent 15:43]  
>  you did, you soooo did!
> 
> [Sent 15:44]  
>  i dont blame you, his tummy looks very pokeable
> 
> [Received 15:45]  
>  He’s got the affection and violent play wires crossed in his head. Petting means he must purr and beg for more but also chew on the closest thing
> 
> [Received 15:45]  
>  Which was me, in this case
> 
> [Sent 15:45]  
>  that is fucking adorable
> 
> [Received 15:46]  
>  It really is

Yuri doesn’t want to be _too_ much of a nuisance, so he tries to quell the urge to spam Otabek’s phone with pictures. The majority of his photos get uploaded only to instagram. Despite his restraint, he's still leading Otabek four or five to one in number of messages sent, even with his injunction to ‘send me more photos, come on.’

When he beats Victor to gold in the Russian nationals (“Yurio, I only had two weeks to prepare,” Victor tries to justify; “You’re just a sore loser, old man; face up to the fact that you’ve lost your edge,” Yuri replies easily — he will milk this victory for all that it’s worth, he _beat Victor Nikiforov_ ), Yuri limits himself to one photo to Otabek: ‘GOLD’, all caps, titling a shot of the medal hanging on the chest of his Team Russia jacket. Otabek replies with ‘Congratulations, Yuri. I knew you could do it. Oberon agrees’ and another cat picture. (He’s started taking the order to send photos seriously and it’s awesome.)

Over the next two days, Yuri takes countless medal selfies.

“You must be really thrilled, Yurio; you've got 300 of the exact same picture,” Victor says, indulgent. “Enjoy it while you can.” He’s lounging against the rink boards in St. Petersburg, watching Yuuri run through his free skate choreography for the sixteenth time today. It’s disgusting how smitten he is. Yuri breaks the selfie streak in his camera roll so he can take a photo of their stupid faces for instagram mocking purposes.

“Shut up, Vitya,” he drawls as he searches for the perfect composition, “you’re just jealous of how good the gold looks with this jacket. You’re never getting the center podium spot back, by the way. Get used to it.”

Several of the medal selfies are online now, tagged with things like #suckitnikiforov and #toprussian, but on the best one—Yuri holding the medal in one upraised fist, grinning ferally, with Victor looking distraught in the background—Yuri tags @otabek-altin, and adds ‘I’ll see you at Worlds.’

In the photo, Victor’s pout was actually directed at Yuuri (conveniently out of the frame), who was ignoring him in favor of video calling Phichit, but the shot was too perfect for Yuri to resist. Victor protests the picture, predictably, though not for the vain reasons Yuri first thinks.

“It's misleading!” Victor cries, seeing the image of his own tearful, wobbly-lipped expression apparently pointed at Yuri’s gold medal. “I'm _proud_ of you, Yurio, I'm not upset that you won!”

Yuri knows, on some level, that this is true, and it warms a part of him he refuses to think about. At the same time, he knows that Victor is at least a little annoyed about not quad-flipping right back into gold immediately upon his return to competition. It does Yuri good to see photo evidence that the man isn't actually as perfect and pure-hearted as Yuuri seems to believe he is, even if the implication in this particular shot isn't entirely truthful.

Besides, it’s not just a photo, it’s a _narrative_. ‘Yuri Triumphant.’ He’s a damn artistic genius.

The photo tops a thousand likes within the first twenty minutes. None of them are from Otabek, because Otabek obviously lives under a rock.

Otabek is, however, finally warming to their photo exchange — and yeah, he is _so_ a good photographer. Yuri was right. He sends Yuri a growing number of images of his home rink in Almaty, his rink mates, the garden outside his apartment building. Lots of pictures of Oberon, lounging like his namesake royalty over any available soft surface. Otabek will reply in sentences to photos Yuri sends him, but his standalone captions leave something to be desired; when they’re present at all, they're usually just names, 'Oberon’ and 'Medeu’ and 'KazNU park.’

At least he's sending them at all. Each photo is a tantalizing peek into Otabek's life.

The park is a morning destination, with slanting rays of early sunlight highlighting students on their way to campus and joggers in neon sweats. Otabek must do his cooldown rinkside, because Yuri receives the majority of the rinkmate shots over a regular 20 minute stretch in the early afternoons — late afternoon in Almaty — from somewhere past the rink boards, looking down the length of the ice.

‘Sabina and Alexey, ice dancers,’ Otabek sends, the day after New Years.

‘sloppy,’ Yuri replies, and they are: Alexey’s crouch isn’t deep enough for the lift they’re attempting and he’s arching his spine too much. He’s going to end up dropping Sabina. It’ll be entirely his own fault when he splits his skull open with her skate.

The next picture, barely a minute later, shows their coach berating them both from the corner boards, red-faced. Alexey has his arms crossed, equal parts mulish and shamed. Sabina looks like she wants to hit him.

> **Otabek Altin**
> 
> [Received 13:24]  
>  Very sloppy
> 
> [Sent 13:24]  
>  and you have to share rink space with these two?
> 
> [Sent 13:24]  
>  dont pick up bad habits
> 
> [Received 13:25]  
>  I don’t do lifts, but thanks for your concern
> 
> [Received 13:25]  
>  Coach Kaliyev is remarkably loud
> 
> [Sent 13:25]  
>  bet yakov’s louder
> 
> [Sent 13:26]  
>  he rattled a window loose when vitya took off for japan

There’s a pause long enough that Yuri begins to wonder if Otabek got called away by his coach. Yuri really needs to get back to practice, anyway; Yakov isn’t going to keep letting him get away with half-assed stretching while he awaits a response. But then another text pops up.

> **Otabek Altin**
> 
> [Received 13:28]  
>  From two meters away, he’s at 76 dB. I’m not getting closer for a better reading
> 
> [Sent 13:28]  
>  omg you measured!
> 
> [Sent 13:28]  
>  i cant believe you measured it, thats amazing
> 
> [Received 13:29]  
>  76 dB, Yuri. At two meters distance. That should be about 94 dB from right next to him. Can Yakov beat that?
> 
> [Sent 13:29]  
>  challenge fucking accepted

The quest to needle Yakov into a screaming fit falls by the wayside in the furor of competition season. Yuri puts in long hours at the rink in the mornings, too focused on improving his endurance to remember his playful bet with Otabek. Allegro Appasionato has a lot of jumps and he wants to keep it backloaded like he did at the GPF for the points, but every day pushes the limits of his endurance further. It’s an uncomfortable stretch that leaves him wiped and irritable by his afternoon sessions with Lilia.

Still, he finds time to text. Otabek is gearing up for Four Continents, and in their spare moments they commiserate over bruises and share unheated complaints about cat hair and dumb memes lifted from twitter.

It’s… nice. To have something low-pressure, someone to talk to that isn’t directly involved in his competitive career.

So this is being friends. Not so hard as he’d feared.

In the buzzing, anticipatory lull sandwiched between Yuri’s win at Russian Nationals in December and the upcoming European Championships in late January, Otabek sends a video labelled ‘Catnip’.

The eleven-second clip opens with Oberon standing perfectly still, legs braced wide, staring somewhere to the left of the camera with eyes that are almost entirely pupil. His fluffy tail is bottle-brush large. At some unseen cat signal, Oberon flies into action: he leaps from the couch arm, springboards off the far wall, sends a stack of blu-rays flying off the tv stand, and ends up hanging sideways on the back of the couch, all four paws latched into the upholstery.

Yuri cackles like a loon and hoards it to replay for Mila at the rink that afternoon.

Upon watching, she lovingly cuffs him on the back of the head.

“A man after your own heart,” she laughs as she skates away from where he’s sitting on top of the corner boards. “He sure knows how to win you over.”

“Shut up, hag,” Yuri retorts, flustered and not quite sure why. “We're just both cat people. Not my fault you can't appreciate a good catnip video.”

> **Otabek Altin**
> 
> [Sent 18:54]  
>  [photo: Himalayan cat wrapped around a foot, teeth visible where they’re digging into the big toe]
> 
> [Sent 18:54]  
>  potyas favorite game
> 
> [Sent 18:54]  
>  see how much i sacrifice for your entertainment
> 
> [Received 18:52]  
>  Don’t let her eat your feet, Yura, what if she chokes on all those bones?

Yuri stares at the response for a long moment; they don't have much call to address each other by name over text, but Otabek has never used Yuri’s diminutive before. There’s an unfamiliar flutter in his diaphragm.

He opens his contacts and fusses for a moment.

> **Beka**
> 
> [Sent 18:54]  
>  my feet arent bony hdu beka
> 
> [Sent 18:54]  
>  my feet are elegant and powerful
> 
> [Sent 18:55]  
>  and sore as fuck

At the European Championships, Yuri instagrams a series of selfies at landmarks around Ostrava and tags Otabek in every single one. If Otabek's phone blows up with notifications, maybe he’ll remember that he actually has the app installed and start to use it.

It’s a little passive-aggressive, maybe, but that’s part of Yuri’s charm. Or so he’s been told.

The hotel shots, though, go straight to Otabek and no one else. Yuri takes a selfie just outside the Clarion Congress Hotel Ostrava entry, pulling an annoyed face and making sure to capture the view over his shoulder of his Angels trying to swarm him at the bank of windows. Lilia strong-armed him into taking pictures with them first, so he’s wearing a cat-ear headband that just barely shows at the top of the frame. Then he captures a couple shots of the expansive, contemporary-minimalist lobby through the open doors of the elevator.

His favorite photo, though, is the one in front of the window of his seventh floor hotel room. He’s nearly featureless in silhouette, backlit by the sunset shading the rooftops behind him in pink and orange.

‘sunset almost as pretty as in st petersburg,’ he captions it.

‘Is that so? You'll have to send comparison shots so I can judge for myself,’ Otabek replies. His random reply photos have upgraded to medium-high effort; clear, focused, with attention paid to the framing. Secret photographer: confirmed. This shot shows the planter box he’s sitting next to at some Almatinian street cafe, with bare winter vegetation looking sad and bedraggled.

Yuri makes sure to move the selfie to his favorites so he can send it again along with a comparison when he gets back to St. Petersburg. This doubting will not stand.

> **Beka**
> 
> [Sent 09:13]  
>  you know what, you still havent given me your private insta
> 
> [Sent 09:13]  
>  what the hell beka
> 
> [Sent 09:13]  
>  arent we friends??
> 
> [Received 09:14]  
>  Sorry. It’s kingoberon
> 
> [Sent 09:14]  
>  ...did you name it for your cat?
> 
> [Received 09:14]  
>  Of course. Wouldn’t you?
> 
> [Sent 09:15]  
>  yeah youre right i totally would
> 
> [Received 09:15]  
>  Also, it was originally just an account for cat pictures
> 
> [Received 09:16]  
>  But he deserves to be immortalized in url form regardless
> 
> [Sent 09:16]  
>  absofuckinglutely
> 
> [Received 09:19]  
>  Added you. Sorry if it’s boring, but not all of us live glued to our phones like some punks I could name
> 
> [Sent 09:19]  
>  😝
> 
> [Sent 09:21]  
>  ah so this is where all your good photos are
> 
> [Sent 09:21]  
>  i was right
> 
> [Received 09:22]  
>  ?
> 
> [Sent 09:23]  
>  nvm just confirming a theory

Yuri loses the gold to Victor in the European Championships by less than two points.

He’s not bitter.

He’s a little bitter. Okay, he’s very bitter. The disappointment stings worse after the high of winning gold at Nationals.

“Put it from your mind,” Lilia tells him on the plane when they’re heading back home. “You need to focus on the future. Past loss is nothing more than a lesson; you learn from it and push on to surpass it.”

“Yeah. Right,” Yuri grouses, crossing his arms and slumping in his seat. He can’t pretend that nothing happened, and Lilia’s response just makes him more upset. He wants to fume, scream, steep in his anger until the rage propels him higher, but she obviously expects him to go along with her nose-in-the-air act.

On their first full day back in St. Petersburg, Yuri is right back to training. Ballet practice fills his afternoons these days, with Lilia directing him closely as he works through drills. He’s still fuming about the loss and it shows in his every move: too sharp, too sudden, strain in all his limbs. If he were practicing something like his Welcome to the Madness exhibition skate, he could channel it into stage presence, but here in the studio it just makes him the subject of Lilia’s ire.

“Be beautiful in all things,” she scolds. “Anger is not beautiful, Yura; only drive and poise are beautiful. Run through that sequence again, and focus this time.”

“How are you so calm about this?” he bites out, collapsing out of his posture. “It was _your_ choreography that lost to _Victor.”_

She raises one perfectly-groomed eyebrow. “…I am going to ignore that childish outburst, because I know you know it’s beneath you. Our time today is running short. Second position. Now. Do you want gold at Worlds or not?”

“I wanted gold at Euros, but that didn’t happen, did it?”

“You have the talent to beat Victor, and Yuuri Katsuki, and every other competitor. You’ve done it before.” Lilia places her hands on her hips, poised even as she fixes him with a piercing stare. “I can take you to your full potential, but only if you put in the work. Stop complaining and start practicing.”

Yuri tries, he does, lifting up into position, but he’s doing turns and the first one flashes him back to the flying sit spin Victor pulled off at Euros. The reminder catapults him right back into rage, his body rebelling. “God, I hate him!”

Lilia’s lips purse. “Yuri Plisetsky, get out of my studio. You may not return until you work this unbecoming behavior out of your system.”

So he goes back to the rink. He can skate circles around everyone else here. He _can._

Except Victor and Yuuri are both there, being competent and friendly and too fucking good; he can’t stand looking at Victor laughing and twizzling around the far end of the ice. He keeps seeing pieces of Victor’s free skate, the one that pushed Yuri out for the gold, every time he looks at him.

Yuri wants to compete with the best, of course he does; it’s why he moved to seniors this year. But he wants to compete against the best and _win,_ and he couldn’t do it and he disappointed Grandpa and he’s just— _so pissed off._ Both Yuuri and Victor keep giving him these sympathetic, supportive looks that he wants to claw right off their stupid faces.

He doesn’t last ten minutes before storming off the ice and stomping all the way back home.

When Yuri finally manages to pull a screaming fit from Yakov the next day, it isn’t intentional.

He knows in his head that he shouldn’t be so angry. It’s not like him. He wasn’t even this mad when he lost to JJ _fucking_ Leroy, and that defeat stung worse than a thousand papercuts and even more annoying. But he can’t seem to stop, either, and the rage has been simmering ever since the score announcements back in Ostrava, so when Yakov shouts at him that he’s under-rotating his triple axel, Yuri goes off like a bottle rocket. He’s all challenge and fire, hurling abuse as if he’s paid by the word.

Yakov roars right back, and Yuri is so far beyond anger, so incandescent with fury that he just pulls out his phone, opens up the decibel-measuring app Otabek recommended, and shoves it in Yakov’s face. Which only makes the screaming worse.

He gets himself thrown out of the rink, too. At least tomorrow is Saturday, his usual day off, so he doesn’t have to face Yakov again for over 36 hours.

“Hi, Yura,” Otabek says that evening. “How’ve you been? I haven’t heard from you.”

Yuri hasn’t returned any of his texts today, too enraged to compose words that aren’t profanities, but when he saw the incoming video call he couldn’t _not_ pick up. Guilt eats at him, stirring up the ever-present anger into a sickening roil in his stomach.

“Fine,” he replies, sullen and bitter. Otabek watches him intently, not saying a word.

“Not fine,” Yuri amends. “I’m fucking _pissed off,_ that’s how I am.”

“About what?”

“Yakov. Europeans. _Victor.”_ He injects all his venom into the name. “I can’t— I should have won, I should have been better than him but he just had to win it _again_ and I couldn’t get the gold for Grandpa and—” He breaks off with an unintelligible growl, furious and hurting. He’s not going to think about Grandpa right now. That’ll just make it worse.

“Yura.” Otabek’s voice is low and steady. “You’ll overcome this. It was only one competition. Next time you’ll beat Victor to the gold, I know it. You just need to persevere.”

Normally Yuri finds Otabek’s style of motivation to be dorky but kind of cute. Right now he wants to scream. He’s boiling over again, erupting like a volcano full of bile.

“What the hell do you know about it?” he shouts. “Shut up! You don’t care, so don’t give me your fucking platitudes! God, just leave me alone!”

Otabek’s face closes like a bank vault slamming shut. “Okay,” he says, and hangs up.

Yuri is—

—blank. Stunned. He stares at the ‘call ended’ screen, unseeing.

Oh, fuck.

What did he just do?


	2. Chapter 2

Otabek hasn’t contacted him at all since that disaster of a video call.

Not that Yuri blames him.

It’s been two days, though, and Yuri’s rage has fizzled to nothing, replaced by an inescapable black mood. Lilia still won’t let him into her studio, Yakov’s being short with him, and the wall of silence from Otabek is frustratingly solid. No texts, no in-jokes, not even a snap of Oberon with a one-word caption. Yuri misses their easy back-and-forth.

But he hasn’t tried to contact Otabek, either. What could he possibly say? God, did he really shout at Otabek to shut up and leave him alone? Accuse him of not caring?

Otabek should know him better than this by now — of course Yuri shouts, he’s Yuri Fucking Plisetsky, the Russian Punk, and shouting is what he’s known for — but this was beyond the pale, even by his own standards. He gets why Otabek hung up on him. Hell, he’d have done the same if someone pulled that shit on him. He’s only got himself to blame.

And now Otabek isn’t speaking to him.

God, he’s fucked this all up. His first friend and he couldn’t even keep him two months. If there’s some sort of last-place title in the friendship championships, he’s won it. Yuri Plisetsky: the Worst Friend Ever.

Sleep has been hard to come by, and broken when he does manage it. He keeps waking up frantic and accidentally kicking Potya. After the third time, she'd glared at him in feline disapproval, then picked her way down the blankets to the floor on dainty feet, and she’s refused to sleep in the bed ever since.

Even his cat has turned against him.

 _E tu, Potya?_ he thinks miserably, not for the first time.

It’s late. His phone sits silent next to his bed and the notification bar remains blank all night, no matter how many times he checks.

He's moping.

What the hell. He doesn't _do_ this. Normally he’s comfortable with distance, with barbed sparring, holding people at arm's length with shouted insults and damn the consequences. He’s never cared about earning forgiveness before — not except for Grandpa’s. No one else was worth it.

But something about Otabek draws Yuri in, makes him want to be different.

Fuck, he has to do something to fix this.

“Mila! Where are you, hag? I need to talk to you!”

...That was not his most politic of opening statements, but whatever. She knows him. And she’ll know what to say to Otabek, too.

It’s mid-afternoon and she’s usually at practice now, but today she’s not on the ice. She’s not by the boards lacing up her skates, either. Yakov, thankfully, is nowhere in evidence, so at least Yuri doesn’t have to pretend not to see him.

“Mila!”

 _“What?”_ she shouts from the locker rooms. “God, I’ve had it up to _here_ with selfish assholes today!”

Did he manage to piss her off, too? No, really, he knows he’s fucked up a lot the last couple days, but he didn’t do anything to _Mila,_ did he? Damn it, he can’t do anything right lately.

He pokes his head around the corner. Mila is sitting with her feet up on the bench just outside the locker room entrance, staring furiously at her phone.

“Hey,” he says.

She spins to face him, dropping her feet to the floor. He _must_ have pissed her off. Her glare has all the force of a cannon. “What do you want?”

“I, um.” This does not look like a good time to bother her. Upset people are not his forte — he’s much better at _causing_ upset than fixing it, as the last two days have so thoroughly proved — but he doesn’t want to alienate his best source of advice, either. He needs to at least make an attempt. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m _fantastic.”_ She looks anything but. Her face is red, her eyes are red, and she’s gripping her phone like she wishes it was someone’s neck. “You’ll be my alibi, right?”

 _Alibi?_ He stares at her, brow crinkled.

“For when I murder Dmitri. He deserves it.”

“Dmitri? The hockey guy you’re dating?” So it’s not Yuri she’s mad at after all. He hasn’t screwed up _everything_ in his life.

“Was. _Was_ dating. He’s also a controlling dickbag who wasn’t _comfortable,”_ and her tone goes mocking on the word, “with me going to a club with my friends, even though _he_ goes to bars and gets drunk with all his teammates every night. Fucking selfish hypocritical asshole. I hope he chokes on a cocktail olive. I hope he takes a header into the boards and kills the rest of his brain cells. He tried to ban me from going out! Who the _fuck_ does he think he is?”

Yuri makes a sound he hopes is sympathetic. Mila shows no signs of slowing down. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her this upset.

“All because he saw Sara’s insta photos of when she and I went out dancing with Michele and Emil in Helsinki. But you know the real kicker? The cherry on this shit sundae?” She opens up instagram on her phone and shoves it at him. “He was making out with some random fan in a bar last night. Right after he told me I wasn’t allowed to go to clubs without him.”

The photo on Mila’s screen shows a man Yuri vaguely recognizes as Dmitri trying to stuff his tongue down the throat of a blonde girl Yuri’s never seen before. _“Damn,”_ he says. “That’s—”

“So I told him off, and he called me an ugly whore, basically. So then I said he had all the grace of a bear on a three-day bender and a dick like a piece of string.”

“Holy shit, Mila. When did this happen?”

“Just now.”

This guy is going to find razorblades in his dumb hockey skates and no one is going to be able to prove a thing. Mila has _ways._

Yuri sits down next to her on the bench and bumps her shoulder with his own. She laughs, low and a little hollow. Thank fuck she’s not a crier; Yuri wouldn’t have the first clue how to deal with that.

They sit in silence for a while, mostly because he has no idea what to say. Eventually Mila, regaining a bit of her equilibrium, bumps his shoulder again. She’s just as aggressive about it as he usually is and the motion almost knocks him over.

“I have _awful_ taste in dates. But you’re all right, Yura, for a punk kid. Thanks. You, um.” She sniffs. “You had a question?”

He considers her: flushed face, burning eyes, hunched shoulders. She’s either going to appreciate the distraction or yell at him, and the way his week has been going, his luck is leaning toward the latter. But honestly, either way is fine with him. “I fucked up with Beka.”

“Oh, yeah? What did you do?” she asks. No yelling yet; that’s a good sign.

Yuri hunches his shoulders. “He was being nice and I bit his head off. For no good reason. I mean, I was pissed off, but not at him. And then he just said ‘okay’ and hung up.”

Pursing her lips in an obvious attempt to suppress a smile, Mila says, “You’re like a hissing little kitten. This is more in the ‘how to be friends’ conversation, isn’t it? Okay, I’ll bite.” She nods decisively. “Did you apologize?”

“Not yet. He hasn’t talked to me since.”

“Otabek’s a quiet guy, but I got the sense that he feels things deeply. Just look at his skating, you know? Very expressive.”

“Yeah, and?”

“So you probably upset him, even if he didn’t show it. Grow up a little and apologize. It’s his call whether to accept it, but you’ve got to be the one to reach out first. _You_ screw up, _you_ make the effort to fix it. Don’t make him do the heavy lifting.”

“…Fuck. I thought you might say something like that.” He’ll do it, though. He really likes Otabek.

“Because you know I’m the smart one around here.”

“I came to you for advice, didn’t I? You don’t see me asking _Victor,_ jesus.”

“God, that would be a disaster,” she laughs. “His idea of flirting is to fly halfway around the world and throw himself at his crush dick-first.”

“‘Desperate’ does not begin to cover it.”

“At least neither of us are that bad, right?”

“Pssh. I’m not desperate at all, and I’m not flirting, either.”

“Your little crush says differently,” Mila sing-songs.

“What crush?!”

“The painfully obvious one? On this stoic Kazakh guy we both know? Your exhibition skate at the GPF was not subtle, little Yurochka.”

“I do _not_ have a crush, I have a _friend!”_

“Keep telling yourself that. But fine, I’ll let it go for now. Just know that you’re in denial.”

Yuri rolls his eyes at her. He does not have a— a _crush_ on Otabek. He just wants to make up with his friend. Otabek is _his_ in a way no one else has ever been and it hurts to be out of his good graces.

Not a crush, though. Mila’s wrong.

She grins suddenly, and it’s full of shark teeth. “Here’s my price, Yura: tell me what you did to piss off Yakov so bad.”

Yuri grins right back at her. _This is more like it._ “Did you know that you can measure decibels with your phone?”

It’s well after midnight when Yuri works up the nerve to send the first message.

> **Beka**
> 
> [Sent 00:34]  
>  yakov chewed me out the other day
> 
> [Sent 00:34]  
>  pretty sure i deserved it
> 
> [Sent 00:35]  
>  but i measured for you. only 92 db from right in front of his face
> 
> [Sent 00:36]  
>  you win

...Why is he waiting for a response? It’s long past three in the morning in Almaty. Otabek is fast asleep, not ignoring him.

Okay, ignoring him, too. Yuri can understand that.

He’s been considering his options all day, but here in his darkened bedroom looking over the messages he just sent, he realizes, reluctantly, that he needs to be more direct. This is on him. He’s the one who screwed up, he’s the one who managed to scare off one of the only people in his life that he’s actually wanted to keep around.

And he’s being a fucking coward about it.

It’s time for real capitalization. He’ll make an exception to his own iron-clad lowercase rule for Otabek; he owes him that. This whole stupid situation is his own fault and he’s the only one who can fix it.

They’re supposed to be _friends._

He hits ‘send’ with his heart clogging his throat and then throws his phone at the foot of the bed.

> **Beka**
> 
> [Sent 00:42]  
>  I’m sorry, Otabek. I’m really sorry.

‘Yura.’ Otabek texts him the next morning. Nothing else, just the diminutive.

Even that is enough to make Yuri’s breath quicken. He’d expected his conversation history to show forevermore the evidence of his complete failure at friendship: his last text, trying to apologize with capital letters and everything, and accusatory silence from the other end as Otabek ghosted right out of his life.

‘yeah?’ Yuri eventually responds, heart in his throat, when it’s clear that no more messages are forthcoming.

Shit, he forgot to capitalize.

The blank notification bar taunts him for another two minutes. Then: ‘This is my year. I’m going to win gold for Kazakhstan at the World Championship.’ And another right on its heels: ‘Try to stop me.’

The knot in Yuri’s stomach loosens, tightens, loosens again; at least Otabek is still speaking to him. His gravitas is oddly suited to text messages.

The challenge is an olive branch.

‘Just watch me,’ Yuri sends and hopes he hasn’t overstepped.

“Hi, Coach Yakov,” Yuri says, stepping into the rink.

“Hmph. Well? On the ice, you’re drilling for the next two hours.”

Yuri doesn’t bother protesting; Yakov still has that irate look about the eyes and Yuri’s not ready to challenge it this early in the morning. Besides, needling Yakov is only fun when Yuri knows he’s in the right and he’s pretty certain that, this time, he’s not.

He does his drills without complaint and then moves on to running through his free skate. The memory of Otabek’s texts buoys him and he lands his jumps cleanly every time, so focused that his face smoothes into serenity. Lilia hardly has to move her head before he’s anticipating the criticism she’s about to give and preemptively correcting. Yakov studies him with his brow furrowed all morning, but offers no commentary.

Lilia lets him back into her studio that afternoon.

No other messages come in that day, but the following morning, Yuri wakes to find a text from Otabek waiting for him in a resurgence of their old pattern. He’s so relieved just to see the notification that he feels light-headed.

> **Beka**
> 
> [Received 03:29]  
>  92 dB is weak and you can do better. You probably shouldn’t try for it today, though, or you might damage him.
> 
> [Received 03:31]  
>  I accept your apology, Yura. Have a good practice.

The sudden release of tension makes Yuri feel floaty and weightless. He grins stupidly at his phone.

> **Beka**
> 
> [Sent 06:04]  
>  Thank you, Beka.
> 
> [Sent 06:04]  
>  Have a good practice
> 
> [Sent 06:05]  
>  and dont worry ill give yakov at least another week before i make his blood pressure spike again
> 
> [Sent 06:05]  
>  hes my coach, i dont actually want to kill him

Yuri brings a bag of pastries for Yakov.

“What’s this? Are you trying to bribe me, you little scamp?” He sounds fond, though. Well, as fond as Yakov gets.

“Of course not,” Yuri scoffs.

“Bribery doesn’t work on me, you know,” Yakov tells him dourly, poking through the bag. “Did you get— oh, you did. Good. Okay, we’re working on the step sequence at the three minute mark in Appassionato. Go warm up.”

No endless drills today. All is forgiven. Bribery doesn’t work, his _ass._ Still, Yuri makes a mental note to never bring up the ‘old man who never had to do a quad in his life’ comment ever again. He’d like to live long enough to see his twenties, thanks.

Over the next couple days, his texted conversations with Otabek build back up to their former frequency. It feels like he’s walking on eggshells, but Yuri slowly relaxes in the spaces between meandering non-sequiturs on Otabek’s neighbors (mostly college students attending Kazakhstan National University, but there’s an ancient woman on the next floor up whose shopping Otabek does every week — she insists on paying him in manti that are apparently to die for, and regular batches of buarsak despite his protests that fried pastry doesn’t fit in his competition diet, and he promises to send some to Yuri), or fashion (Otabek has a weird affinity for grandpa sweaters and Yuri is determined to convert him to the Church of Leopard Print, but they both agree that leather jackets are the height of cool), or just cat photos traded back and forth.

Otabek has very serious opinions on the narrative structure of motivational posters. It’s captivating.

The whole thing is strange, though. Yuri’s anger usually stews, circling in his head, but Otabek somehow just… lets it go. He never once mentions their fight — no, Yuri’s screw-up; Otabek did nothing wrong except trying to be a good friend — or the days of silence after. They seem to be back to normal with no fanfare at all. Yuri doesn’t understand, but he’s grateful.

Otabek’s friendship is worth a lot to him, and he really doesn’t want to mess it up again.

Yuri receives three images from Otabek’s time at the Four Continents Championships in Gangneung: first, a wide-angle view of the Donghae Convention Hotel housing all the competitors, windows reflecting the sparkling seafoam color of the sky against the ornate white facade.

Second, a short video clip of Yuuri’s gold-winning free skate, in which his quad salchow appears effortless. (‘I taught him to land that,’ Yuri texts. Otabek sends him the sunglasses emoji, startling a laugh out of Yuri that he stifles in his fingers with a quick glance around the empty apartment to make sure there were no witnesses. He’s conflicted: on the one hand, Otabek is finally branching out into emojis! But on the other, he’s being a sassy shit. Yuri doesn’t know whether to be proud or annoyed. Maybe a bit of both.)

The third image, received later that evening, is the first selfie Otabek has ever sent to Yuri. Otabek is back at the hotel after the medaling ceremony, and the shot is clearly inspired by Yuri’s sunset selfie from Ostrava, set up in front of the sliding glass door to his room’s balcony. The silver medal on his chest shows up bright against the maroon t-shirt he’s wearing, and his hair is unstyled, still wet from a shower. The darkening sky over Gangneung fills most of the frame, with Otabek’s body bracketing the view along one edge of the photo, his mouth tipped up in a private little smile.

It’s… wow. Yuri feels like he’s just crashed to the ice after a poorly-landed jump, all the wind knocked out of him. He can’t find the words to respond.

In the photo, Otabek’s hair is dripping on his shirt—even with the dark fabric and the backlighting, Yuri can see the water staining the collar black in uneven patches. The ribbon of the medal runs over a large damp spot spreading across his collarbone. It’s all Yuri can look at.

He needs to _say something._ Otabek is waiting for a response. He sent Yuri a selfie for the first time and Yuri has been sitting here staring at it for way too long without a word in reply. Otabek is going to think he’s a creep or something.

‘congrats on silver,’ Yuri’s fingers type, the words appearing without his mind forming them. ‘still think you can take the gold from me at worlds?’ Which is… not quite what he wanted to say, but it will have to do. He’s not entirely sure what it is he wanted to say instead, but his pulse is pounding in his throat. He scrolls back up to stare at the photo some more.

Then Otabek sends him the sunglasses emoji again and Yuri’s brain thunks back into gear. He snorts.

‘beka. you know theres a whole keyboard full of those dont you?’

A third sunglasses emoji. A fourth moments later.

Yuri returns fire.

He sends sunglasses. He sends complex narratives about space aliens. He sends emoji keysmashes. He sends a compilation of cats. He will use every single emoji in the palette just so Otabek can’t deny having seen them.

Every time, Otabek responds with the sunglasses. Sometimes he uses multiples, or adds exclamation points. He fires them off in rapid succession whenever Yuri’s half of the conversation slows.

By the end of the night, they have exchanged 197 messages with no actual written words and Yuri’s ribs are aching from laughter.

The next morning, Yuri scrolls back up through the conversation to save The Photo. He carefully avoids examining his reasons.

Then he edits Otabek's contact info, adding sunglasses surrounding his name.

Victor and Yuuri get him a new jacket for his 16th birthday, in purple leopard print to match his high-tops. It might be the best birthday present he’s ever received.

Not that he’ll tell _them_ that.

He immediately swaps out his old jacket for the new, though, so they can probably tell. Then he takes a selfie to send to Otabek.

> **🕶️ Beka 🕶️**
> 
> [Sent 11:26]  
>  what do you think?
> 
> [Received 11:27]  
>  Too much leopard print.
> 
> [Sent 11:27]  
>  shut up you jerk, you like gold velvet and fucking argyle, jfc youre a disaster
> 
> [Sent 11:27]  
>  i take it back, you dont get to have an opinion

Only after the messages have sent does Yuri realize what he just said. He waits with bated breath for Otabek’s response, hoping he didn’t just undo all his careful work rebuilding their relationship with two thoughtless texts.

> **🕶️ Beka 🕶️**
> 
> [Received 11:28]  
>  Argyle is stylish, Yura. Don’t try to argue.
> 
> [Received 11:28]  
>  And there IS such a thing as too much leopard print, no matter what you’d like to believe.

_Oh, thank fuck._

They can tease each other again. His didn’t destroy anything, not now and not even with his stupid outburst a week prior. They’re really okay.

Later that evening, around the time Otabek usually goes to bed, Yuri receives a link to an album on Bandcamp.

 _Ice Tiger,_ it’s called, and the description reads, _Happy birthday, Yura._

Holy shit. Otabek made him an album.

This is the _coolest fucking thing that has ever happened to him._

And it’s _good._ Yuri plugs in his earbuds and hits play, and he’s immediately swept up in swirling, glorious chaos, all heavy drum loops and crashing, liquid melody. A stormy sonic sea. Yuri is transfixed, his heart pounding in time with the beat.

This is fantastic. It’s like Otabek reached into Yuri’s head and pulled out his perfect music. He wants to skate to it. He wants to watch Otabek skate to it.

How long does it take to make an album? Was Otabek already working on this when…? He probably was. It was probably already well started when Yuri— shit, he _wasn’t thinking about that,_ he fixed it and they’ve moved on, okay? It was dealt with. Yuri didn’t need to keep revisiting his fuck-ups in his head. All the same, he feels a stab of bittersweet gratefulness in his chest; if he hadn’t somehow found his way back to Otabek’s good graces, he’d never have heard this. Hell, Otabek probably wouldn’t have finished it at all, just left all the half-formed tracks forever abandoned, and that’s— unthinkable.

Yuri lets the whole album play through, then starts it again, and it occurs to him that he’s just been severely outclassed in the gift-giving department. What the hell can he get for Otabek’s birthday that will top this?

At least he has until October to think about it.

He falls asleep midway through his third listen and the richly layered synths and distorted bass follow him into his dreams.

Otabek is wearing that shirt again, that maroon one with the collar turning black with water from his wet hair. He’s also in black boxer briefs and standing by the window.

“Beka,” Yuri says, and his voice comes out husky.

“Hello, Yura,” Otabek says, his damp shirt clinging to his muscles. He leans in, suddenly, distractingly close. “Come to see me win gold?”

Yuri gasps and then he’s awake, staring at his ceiling, unable to stop thinking about how Otabek’s shoulders looked encased in soft, maroon cotton.

 _It’s nothing,_ he tells himself. _It’s the music getting to me, that’s all. He’s my best friend; I don’t think about him like that. It’s just the music._

The album ended who knows how long ago and there's only silence in his earbuds, but whatever.


	3. Chapter 3

Before he knows it, it’s the end of March and Yuri’s in Helsinki for the World Championships. The Russian contingent and their Japanese transplant arrive in a single unit, Yakov’s scowling countenance leading the way to the check-in counter at Scandic Park Helsinki with his small flock of skaters trailing behind. Yuri is trying in vain to hide behind Mila, keeping a wary eye on the mob of Yuri’s Angels lying in wait near the restaurant entrance. Victor has one arm thrown over Yuuri’s shoulders. They’re both laughing at him.

“You’ll be too tall for that to work soon, Yurio,” Victor says gleefully.

Mila snorts and sidesteps him. “You have to face them some time, _kotenka,”_ she says, reaching out to ruffle his hair as she heads to the counter with Yakov. What is with her obsession with his hair? He tugs his hood lower over his forehead and glares.

“We should have gotten you a different jacket,” Yuuri adds, trying to sound solicitous, but Yuri can hear the mirth in his voice. Pig. “The leopard print is too eye-catching. You’ll draw their attention no matter what.”

Yuri scoffs at him and hunches his shoulders lower. No way will he change his style just to avoid a few screaming fans.

As he turns, Yuri catches sight of Otabek from across the lobby: leather jacket and familiar undercut, shoulders drawn in, hands in his pockets, sunglasses perched on his head. Yuri is about to call out — honestly, sunglasses on his _head,_ has Yuri taught him _nothing?_ _—_ when Otabek pivots toward the check-in desk and spots him.

Otabek makes deliberate eye contact for a moment, face impassive, and then twitches a finger on the earpiece of his sunglasses. They fall neatly onto his nose.

Yuri claps his hands to his mouth. Oh god. Fucking _sunglasses._ Oh hell, he’s going to—

Otabek stares. Slowly, slowly, one of his eyebrows lifts over the dark rim of the glasses.

Yuri _howls_ with glee. Yuuri’s gaze darts to him in shock, and Victor looks rather spooked, but Yuri is too busy folding over his own knees with the force of his laughter to pay any attention.

It’s hard to believe it’s only been three months since their friendship started.

“What’s got him...” Victor begins. “Oh! Hi, Otabek!”

Yuri grapples to stifle his mirth as Otabek approaches. “Sun— sunglasses! Beka, you _asshole!”_ The words come out too fond, but Otabek is wearing a tiny lopsided smile and Yuri can’t help himself.

“Hello, Victor, Yuuri,” Otabek says, and then softer, “Hi, Yura.” He folds his sunglasses and tucks them into his jacket pocket. “How was the flight?”

Yuri fights down the last of his chuckles, though the smile lingers. “Boring as shit, but that’s the usual. These two,” he indicates Victor and Yuuri with a jerk of his thumb, “were all over each other the whole way.”

“We were _sleeping!”_ Yuuri insists, red-faced.

 _“You_ were sleeping,” Yuri counters. _“Vitya_ was petting your hair. And _cooing._ It was gross.” He’s got ten new photos on his twitter to prove it, too.

Victor is grinning, unabashed. “Join us for lunch?” he asks Otabek. He looks way too enthused. Yuri doesn’t trust it.

Otabek must pick up on Yuri’s trepidation, or maybe he doesn’t trust Victor’s grin, either, because he answers, “Maybe later. I was just heading up to get settled in.”

“Dinner, then?” Victor presses. “We’ll make an event of it! Everyone can come.”

“Not JJ.” Yuri’s putting his foot down on that one.

“Who?”

“The Canadian,” Yuuri supplies, because apparently he buys Victor’s innocent act. Victor is visibly thrilled.

“I repeat, who?” Victor is honestly _batting his eyelashes,_ and Yuuri looks way too smitten. Yuri needs to be somewhere else.

“Let’s go, Beka. Which floor are you on?”

Otabek lets himself be led toward the elevators by the arm. “The sixth.”

“Okay, I’m hanging out with you until Yakov gets me my room key. _We’re leaving!”_

“Dinner at 8!” Victor calls. “Meet us back here!”

Yuri waves a dismissive hand over his shoulder as the elevator doors close.

They go for fondue. Yuri endures, with bad grace, Victor’s incessant cheese jokes. Then, of course, Phichit starts with the puns and the whole table is off.

“Hello,” Christophe sings, “is it brie you’re looking for?”

“Pretty sure this restaurant is up to no gouda.”

“I’ll take your curd for it.”

“Oh, Yuuri, I’m so fondue you,” Victor purrs in the most exaggerated of tones, and in reply Yuuri laughs and shoves a hand in Victor’s face. Victor squawks.

“Fon- _don’t,”_ Yuri huffs. “God, you are all awful people.”

“And yet you’re joining in,” Christophe says, fluttering his lashes.

“Guang-Hong, I think it might be Chris who’s up to no gouda,” Leo says with a laugh.

(Otabek leans in to Yuri and murmurs, “Swiss is the holiest cheese,” and that joke is just as bad, but somehow it’s much funnier when Otabek is the one saying it.)

“Okay, everyone,” Phichit says loudly, “lean in and say brie! …No, really, that wasn’t a joke; I want a selfie.”

The food arrives mid-’grating’ pun and everyone absorbs themselves in sorting out plates and baskets of dippables. Phichit isn’t the only one at the table composing shots for instagram. Everything looks photogenically delicious.

Over the course of the evening, Chris copes with his lack of Victor-flirting by flirting with everyone else at the table, Yuuri rebuffs every single attempt to offer him wine (and there are _many_ attempts), Guang-Hong and Leo have eyes only for each other, and Mila spends an inordinate amount of time snickering into her hands with Sara Crispino.

Really, though, the best part of the evening is watching Otabek struggle not to crack a smile at Yuri’s own terrible jokes, especially since Otabek is the only one he lets hear them.

The World Championships pass in a haze of adrenaline. Yuri remembers the week in fragments:

Lilia’s face as she yells about his sloppy free leg (again) on the last full day of practice;

The grin he shares with Victor as Mila blazes through her short program and lands squarely in first place;

Silence falling across the stands as he finds his opening pose for ‘On Love: Agape,’ his blades sure on the ice and Otabek’s voice calling ‘Davai!’ still echoing in his ears;

Otabek’s vest glittering as he takes his triumphant final pose at the end of his Samarkand skate, surpassing JJ with a new personal best score;

Victor effortlessly landing a quad flip-triple toe loop combo in the short program that breaks Yuri’s world record score from only months before;

The look of poorly-masked terror or Yuuri’s face when Christophe swans into the rooftop hot tub Yuuri had been sharing with Victor, clearly visible across the terrace from Yuri’s seat at a cafe table overlooking the city (and this one he actually got a photo of. He’s not sure who he’ll blackmail with it, but blackmail will happen and it will be sweet.)

And then the following day, Otabek takes a bad fall on the second jump in his free skate and never quite manages to recover the program.

“What the fuck was that?” Yuri asks the empty seat next to him when it happens, as if the cold rink air would carry his words all the way down to Otabek’s ears. “Get up, you’re fine. No— no, stop that, you're better than this.”

But it's obvious that Otabek's focus is shattered. At the end of it, he glares out from the kiss and cry, stone-faced as his score is announced. It's low, far too low for a skater as good as he is, and all the worse for his triumph yesterday. His eyes are too bright. Yuri is watching now, he's _paying attention_ in a way he hasn't before, and he can see the tenseness in Otabek's jaw, the way he’s holding back tears through sheer stubborn will. There will be no medal for Kazakhstan this year.

Yuri wants to yell. By the set of his jaw, maybe Otabek does, too, but he's got ten cameras trained on him and Otabek doesn't like publicity even on a good day.

Besides, Otabek wouldn't yell. That's Yuri's thing. Otabek just hangs up on you and gives you the silent treatment for three days and then when you finally apologize he just— just _accepts_ it, no questions asked, and doesn't even bring it up again, like you didn't take out your anger on him for no reason and—

Nope, not thinking about that.

Yuri’s still no good at this whole comforting thing, but he hovers just outside the camera range all the same. He wants to say something, but everything he can think of sounds dumb, or trite, or both.

Otabek doesn’t look up as he passes on the way to the lockers.

When it’s time for Yuri to skate, though, Otabek is rinkside again, composed and back in his tracksuit and offering a tiny smile. They exchange their now-customary thumbs up.

“Davai,” Otabek says.

“This is for you, Beka,” Yuri says, because it's the best he got to offer. Otabek nods solemnly.

Yuri skates his fucking heart out.

Two minutes in and it's a struggle. He fights through the fatigue of his program, pushing, ruthless, _driven,_ raised arm jumps and all. Lilia’s choreography has never felt so punishing. But he’s going to win this thing and take gold — not just for himself, but for Otabek, too, because he said he would, because Otabek _sees_ him — and then he kicks off for the quad toe loop-double toe loop combo and he can feel it the moment his pick comes down. His axis is off. His shoulders are too far back, he _can’t catch it,_ can’t—

He fucks up the landing. Fuck everything, he _fucks up the landing_ on a _toe loop,_ he puts a hand on the ice and has to abandon the double and just like that he’s sabotaged his own chances for gold.

With gritted teeth, he pushes on. He’ll be lucky if he can pull silver after that, but the spite is fuel. There’s no way he’s going to let Victor beat him again.

Another jump combo, triple axel, single loop, triple salchow, and he sticks every beat of that one. The stands are a smear in his peripheral vision. One last spin.

_Be the prima._

And that's it. He takes his final pose, lungs desperate for air, but he's going to hold it in until the last note fades into nothingness.

Then he crumples to the ice.

It was enough. It _better_ have been enough.

After that, there are more fragments, with Yuri's pulse pounding a soundtrack:

Yuuri’s flawless free skate (Yuri’d already half given up the gold medal in his head before Katsudon even touched the ice, but watching him skate seals it) and the shocked, joyous expression on Yuuri's face in the kiss and cry when the announcement comes that he broke his own world record, just before Victor tackles him to the floor;

The balloon expanding painfully under Yuri's ribs and cutting his breath short as Victor executes yet another perfect free skate — _fuck, there goes silver, too,_ but at least Yuuri's far enough ahead that Victor won't take gold again;

Standing on the podium with Yuuri and Victor, emotions a confusing mix of defeat and anger and pride, lifting his bronze medal for the cameras while, next to him, Yuuri clutches the gold like someone might take it away;

Otabek’s congratulations and quiet, “I’ll see you later,” as he leaves ahead of the press conference;

The clamor and flash of the reporters;

And later, abandoning his plans for hunting Otabek down when the man himself shows up in the hotel lobby and wordlessly offers a helmet. (He’s learned since the GPF, apparently. No one gets away with hiding from Yuri Plisetsky. Especially not in this mood.)

Otabek guns the engine of the rented motorcycle like he’s trying to outrun something. Yuri still wants to rage and spit and yowl about losing (not only to Victor but to both Victor _and_ Katsudon, which is just— ugh, he doesn’t even have words) but Otabek is tense as glass under Yuri’s arms and the roar of the wind is too loud to shout over, anyway.

So he stews in silence.

They’re somewhere in the forested outskirts of Helsinki. Yuri was already lost six turns ago, so at this point it’s hopeless; all the trees look the same, but the landscape is limned by the amber color of the late evening sun and it’s beautiful when he can let himself focus on it. Chill wind seeps into his scarf. He holds tight to Otabek’s middle while the bike pours over another tight curve of asphalt.

He’s— not _okay_ with losing to Katsudon, but it's more tolerable. Katsudon busted his ass for that victory. Yuri knows that for a fact; he's borne witness to it all season. There are worse people to lose to.

Victor, though. That stings, that _burns,_ that— Victor _left._ He shouldn't be able to climb back up so quick. In hindsight, that’s what ticked Yuri off so badly about his loss at Euros: Victor just swanned in and started picking up gold medals again like he’d never left and upended half of Yuri’s senior debut season. Bastard. _…Huh,_ Yuri thinks. _Maybe Otabek has the right idea about going for a ride after a defeat. Is this what maturity feels like? Personal insight?_

But this time someone else beat Victor, even if it wasn’t Yuri, and god, Victor had looked so happy, so proud to see Katsudon at the top of the podium. Like he'd personally placed him there. Like he'd known all along that Yuuri belonged there and finally the rest of the world saw it, too.

And he _had_ known, hadn't he? Why else take off for Japan like he did?

Then Yuri thinks about it some more, thinks about the ice packs after practice, thinks about how many years Victor's been doing this, and… How much longer will Victor even be competing?

No. At least another year. Yuri still needs to beat him properly. Victor's not allowed to retire yet.

Somehow, though, looking up at Victor on the podium wasn’t so bad this time. He searches for the boiling rage from his last defeat and instead finds a sort of equanimity. He’s not exactly _happy,_ but he’s proud of Victor, and prouder of Yuuri, and quietly proud of himself, too. Bronze at Worlds in his senior debut year isn’t half bad.

The road curves sharply again. Yuri clutches Otabek tighter, leans with him into the turn, and lets the wind rip all thoughts of Victor out of his head.

His thoughts turn instead to Otabek, seated in front of him and guiding the bike along the winding road with a skill that looks effortless. He’s warm and solid in Yuri’s arms, and his leather-clad shoulder provides an excellent windblock, and he just lost badly at Worlds but still came to find Yuri and took him out for a ride on his rented motorcycle despite the tension tangibly running through him.

What is he thinking? How does he feel? Does he rent a bike at every competition and take a ride after it’s over? How does the routine change if he wins? Yuri finds himself desperate to know.

By the time they get back to the hotel garage, all that tension has bled out of Otabek. He doesn't feel like a brick in Yuri's embrace anymore — no, now he's like one of those teddy bears his fans always give him, kind of scowly and grim but all squishy in the middle. He’s loose-limbed and centered again, if the looseness of his spine is anything to go by.

Instead, all the agitation has transferred into Yuri. He’s seething on Otabek’s behalf now; to have your performance marred by a fall like that is a terrible feeling no matter when it happens, but to have it happen at Worlds?

“Are you—” he says as they pull into a space, “sorry, I just can’t— aren’t you mad? About your free skate? That fucking _sucks.”_

“Yes, of course,” Otabek replies, sounding perfectly calm. “But it won’t do any good to work myself up about it now. I’ll use the anger to train that much harder for next year.”

Then Otabek moves to park the bike and Yuri is sharply reminded of the warmth of contact all down his front. The air in the garage is chilly; he doesn’t want to let go, doesn’t want to climb off the bike and end their closeness. Otabek leans the bike onto the kickstand, though, and it’s get up or be dumped to the ground, so Yuri stands and disentangles his arms from Otabek’s waist.

“Good ride?” Otabek asks, looking over his shoulder.

“Yeah.” Yuri mentally shakes himself, then dismounts and watches Otabek swing his leg over the bike. “It’s really beautiful out there. Um. Thanks.”

“Any time. It helps clear my head to take the bike out.”

“I could tell. You got all… _loose._ It’s, uh, why I asked about the skate. You don’t seem upset anymore. I’d be furious. Hell, I _am_ furious and I medaled.”

Otabek’s face tightens a bit. “Don’t misunderstand, I _am_ angry.”

“But you, like, channel it or some shit. Okay, no, I can see it. You’re one of the most driven people I know. I do that, too, it’s just— my anger looks a lot different than yours, you know? You go all calm.”

“I save it for the ice.”

“Ha, if I could do that, Yakov would probably yell less.”

Otabek cocks his head, a tiny smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “You could learn, if you want.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Yuri scoffs. “I know I’m a hothead. You’ve got that whole stoic thing going on, though; bet it comes naturally to you.”

“Yeah. Putting it all on the ice is the only way for me to let it out.”

“Did you want to, um, talk about it? The skate?” God, that was lame, but he wants to help. He’s still fuming that Otabek didn’t medal with him.

Otabek exhales slowly. “I’m angry at myself, really — I messed up. Had I been able to maintain focus, I could have come back from that fall, but I let myself get rattled. And I paid for it.” He shrugs. “So I’m going to train harder, and next year I’ll come back stronger. That’s really all there is to it. I’ve always tried to forge my own path in the skating world. This is just one more way to do so.”

Yuri shakes his head. “You are something else, Beka. So cool. Hey, let’s go get coffee or something; my hands are freezing.”

Yuri has precisely zero interest in remaining anywhere near Victor and gold-medalist-Yuuri’s hotel room after the banquet on Sunday night. His room is right next to theirs, he knows exactly what is going to happen on the other side of the shared wall because it happened Saturday night, too, and he intends to be well out of hearing range this time. He’s also hoping to help distract Otabek, because no matter how cool he’d played it that afternoon, Otabek has got to be feeling the sting of his defeat.

He shows up at Otabek’s room a floor down with two cups of trifle from the hotel restaurant. His hands are full, so he has to kick the door instead of knocking.

“Beka,” he hisses, trying to be loud enough to be heard through the door without waking everyone in the hall. “Beka, open up.”

Otabek answers the door and doesn’t even bat an eye at the late-night arrival.

“Hi, Yura,” he says with a tiny smile. “I thought that might be you. Come in.”

“My room is next door to Vitya and Katsudon,” Yuri offers as the door shuts behind him. “I’m sure you can guess what they’re doing right now.”

Oh hell, Otabek is _blushing_. Yuri’s going to give him so much shit— wait, no he’s not, because he’s blushing, too. Ugh. How can Victor be so embarrassing when he’s not even there? Yuri shoves one of the trifle cups at Otabek.

“Ah, thanks. There’s no table, but...”

Yuri isn’t listening. “You got the room with the big tv! Come on, let’s watch something. There’s got to be some sort of action movie on.”

There isn’t. It’s after midnight on a Sunday night and after flipping through every available channel twice, it becomes clear that the only thing Finnish television has to offer at this hour are infomercials and overwrought dramas. Otabek plucks the remote from Yuri’s hands. They’ve landed on some variety of soap opera with a heavily-pregnant woman.

“This is good enough,” Otabek says. “It’s not like either of us speak Finnish.”

“If we could find something with enough explosions, the language wouldn’t matter,” Yuri grumbles, but it’s a moot point. Otabek’s right, of course.

They sit on the end of the bed and watch in silence as the female lead argues with two other women while they all pick their way through a manicured park. The scene changes to the interior of an apartment. Yuri glances over at Otabek, who is staring at the screen like he wants it to spontaneously combust. Though that could also just be his resting expression; it occurs to Yuri that, for all the time they spend texting each other, they’ve spent very little time face to face. Yuri watches his eyebrows draw in and wonders what he’s thinking about.

It's quiet in the room. The pregnant woman on screen is crying prettily.

“Sergei, don’t leave!” Otabek cries suddenly in a terrible falsetto. Yuri starts.

Otabek continues in a gravelly voice as the tv switches to a view of the male love interest. “Olga, I must. I love your sister.”

Yuri snorts helplessly. Otabek shoots him a tiny, pleased smile.

“But Sergei!” Yuri yowls in Olga-voice. “I’m carrying your child!”

Otabek’s shoulders shake with his poorly-stifled laughter. “That child is not mine! I know you cheated on me with—” Otabek cuts off as the man on screen slams the apartment door. “Oh, wait, I’m leaving.”

Yuri dissolves into snorting laughs.

Before long, they’ve pulled all the bedding to the floor and built a nest at the foot of the bed, where they eat slightly stale trifle and make up increasingly absurd dialog with the television muted. By the end of the episode, Olga has revealed that she’s in love with the father of the baby: Sergei’s cat Vadim, who has been transformed into a human by the strange-looking man who seems to live in the park.

“He’s an alien!” Yuri insists the first time the park guy shows up. “Look at his cheekbones! Those are not fucking human, Beka, do not even try to convince me otherwise. He’s an alien. This is sci-fi now.” And Otabek, who has taken his rightful place as patron saint of going along with Yuri’s batshit crazy, nods sagely and spins a convoluted rationalization for park guy’s emergency crash-landing in the park.

Park guy (Jules, Otabek dubs him) is searching for a rare element needed to repair his ship. Sergei has left Olga for her adopted sister, who is actually a princess in hiding, and they’re all on the run from an underground drug ring whose boss wants to use the princess’s influence and the alien tech from Jules’ ship to enslave world leaders. Jules has to leave so that his ship can’t be used for evil, but the rare element he needs for repairs can only be found in Vadim’s fur. He must transform Vadim back to a cat and take him into the stars. Olga is devastated and seeks comfort in Sergei’s arms.

A new episode starts. There’s a marathon.

Yuri and Otabek curl into each other in their blanket nest and laugh themselves sick for the rest of the night.

“This is the most fun I’ve ever had at a competition,” Yuri tells Otabek when it’s almost two in the morning and they’re inhabiting that earnest, spacey place beyond tiredness where everything feels gravely important.

“Me, too,” Otabek replies, equally solemn.

“Hey.” Yuri tilts his head in so he can look at Otabek’s chin instead of his eyes. “Can I use one of your songs for a program next season? From the album you gave me?”

“I— sure. Of course. You liked it that much?”

“Beka,” Yuri says flatly. Then he pulls up the bandcamp app on his phone. His copy of _Ice Tiger_ has logged 63 plays in the three weeks he’s had it.

Otabe’s eyes widen. Yuri resolves right then and there to spend a lot more time gushing over all the cool shit Otabek does, because apparently Otabek doesn’t realize how incredibly awesome he is and that just will not stand.

They sit wrapped up in blankets and share Yuri’s earbuds, listening to _Constellations Reflected in a Green Sea_ on repeat and debating jump combinations for the crescendo.

“The whole song is about your eyes, Yura; you can’t _not_ do a quad sal. It’s your signature jump.”

“But I want to surprise people. I want to be even more surprising than Victor.”

“Everything about you is a surprise.” Otabek looks at Yuri intently for a long moment as the music plays; he's so serious that Yuri half-expects him to announce a cure for world hunger or something. But then he opens his mouth and says, with enormous dignity, “These earbuds are crap.”

Yuri’s sharp bark of laughter startles the both of them.

The conversation turns again, and again, and eventually they fall asleep together right there on the floor. Yuri’s flight home leaves at 12:30 the following afternoon.

On the third day back in St. Petersburg after Worlds, Yuri sends Otabek a series of photos of his feet: leopard-print Converse set on a cafe table against the backdrop of bustling downtown St. Petersburg (‘the most fashionable shoes in the city’), one foot propped on the rail of the Dvortsoviy Bridge (‘barre away from barre’), climbing the open-riser stairs to the apartment he still shares with Lilia and Yakov. He’ll be leaving for the off-season soon, so he’s squeezing all the enjoyment he can out of his last days in the city.

Otabek texts him, ‘Stop putting your feet on things. What would Jules say?’

Yuri snorts. ‘idc what jules would say,’ he texts back in a rapid series of messages, ‘but olga would say that its good to try new experiences. you should do it too, beka. send me snaps of your feet. whats that shit you always say? branch out! try new things! this is your time!’

He really shouldn’t be surprised when Otabek does so, but it doesn’t stop the flutter in his diaphragm when he receives the first image.

They make plans to go back to Hasetsu now that the season is finished — ‘they’ meaning Yuuri and Victor, and by extension Yuri, though of course Yuri will vehemently deny that he was seeking the company of Katsudon and his pathetic lapdog. He just likes the hot springs, okay? The water feels preternaturally nice on abused muscles; he might go so far as to accuse the Katsuki family of witchcraft, the results are so spectacular. And he has to visit Yuuko while he has the opportunity.

Otabek is at loose ends, too, Yuri knows, relaxing in that hazy time between the end of one season and the beginning of training for the next, and so a week before the flight to Japan, Yuri gets an idea in his head.

> **🕶️ Beka 🕶️**
> 
> [Sent 19:06]  
>  you should come to hasetsu with us
> 
> [Sent 19:06]  
>  have you ever been to a hot spring?

Otabek replies within moments.

> **🕶️ Beka 🕶️**
> 
> [Received 19:06]  
>  No, I never have
> 
> [Received 19:07]  
>  That sounds wonderful. Would Katsuki be all right with it?

Shit, Yuri didn’t even check. He switches conversations.

> **Katsudon**
> 
> [Sent 19:08]  
>  does your place have room for one more
> 
> [Sent 19:08]  
>  otabek wants to come

> **Victor Nikiforov Is Dead**
> 
> [Received 19:10]  
>  Yuuri is indisposed ❤ but yes! Beka should join us! )))))))
> 
> [Sent 19:10]  
>  wtf is that supposed to mean
> 
> [Sent 19:11]  
>  ugh nvm youre disgusting and i dont want to know
> 
> [Sent 19:11]  
>  ill text beka the details and shit
> 
> [Sent 19:12]  
>  ...wait whats the address

Otabek buys a plane ticket. Yuri second-guesses himself for six hours and almost sleeps through his alarm.

This is normal, right? This is what friends do. They invite each other on vacations.

They invite each other on three-week vacations in foreign countries with their skating… brothers, family, whatever. Their Victor and Yuuri.

Maybe that’s a little weird, but they’re world-class athletes. They travel to different countries all the time. This isn’t outside the realm of normal for people like them. Otabek's got enough miles saved up that his plane ticket is free, so it's not like he's spending a ton of money on the trip or anything.

Yuri has plenty of experience with tolerating people. Victor, Mila, Lilia, Yakov — these are people he will, under duress, admit that he might be fond of. Yuuri has recently joined the list. But he would never have called them ‘friends,’ not out loud where anyone could hear; they’re people in his life that he would miss if they were gone, but on a day-to-day basis Yuri thinks of them mostly as annoyances.

Otabek, though, is… different. He’s quiet, he doesn’t tease like Mila or bellow like Yakov or flutter and pry like Victor. He’s steady, restful, just the right amount of wicked. Yuri’s usual level of surliness doesn’t seem to affect him, which has somehow translated to Yuri being more open with him than he has with anyone, really. It’s easy to talk to him.

Otabek told him he has the eyes of a soldier and asked to be friends. Otabek is willing to eat trifle and watch foreign TV with him in a blanket nest on a hotel room floor at 2 in the morning. Otabek _made him an album._

Otabek once sent him a post-shower selfie wearing his silver medal.

Yuri buries his face in his pillow and chases fruitlessly after sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your comments! Each one makes my day, truly. Hope you enjoy this second-to-last chapter!

Yuri, Yuuri, and Victor arrive in Hasetsu on Saturday.

“Yuuri!” a woman’s voice calls from somewhere slightly deeper in the station, the accent differentiating it enough that Yuri is pretty sure she’s not calling _him,_ and Yuuri’s shoulders come up around his ears. God, somehow he’s still shy, despite all his posturing on and off the ice this year. He doesn’t want attention called to him; the aura of ‘shush, go _away’_ is palpable.

Luckily Yuri ignores things like that. “He’s over here!”

“Yuuri!” the voice says again, triumphant this time, and then Minako comes into view. “And Victor and Yurio, too! Hello! Congratulations!” She’s holding a banner with what must be Yuuri’s name in kanji. She shouts something to the crowd in Japanese; Yuri catches Yuuri’s full name and “champion”, and then his own and Victor’s names, too, which means she’s being her usual ostentatious self and announcing their entrance like a commentator.

People are staring. Yuri glares at them as Yuuri tries to shush Minako.

“Yuuri,” Victor says brightly, “wave to your fans! They’re all happy to see you! Hello, everyone!”

“You’re ganging up on me,” Yuuri moans, despairing.

“Shut up, pig, you should be used to this,” Yuri grumps, but doesn’t let up on glaring at the crowd. “Come on, I want to eat. Hurry up.”

It’s not a long walk to Yuutopia Katsuki from the train station, and they make good time despite the fans that want handshakes and autographs, not just from Yuuri but from Victor and Yuri, too. Eventually, though, they make it to Yuuri’s place.

“Welcome in,” Hiroko greets in Japanese, one of the standard phrases Yuri knows, then comes around the corner and all but squeals, her speech turning rapid though Yuri still recognizes enough words to make some sense of it: “Yuuri! You’re home!” and, “Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” Yuuri says, red-faced and hunching. God, he really can’t accept compliments, can he? Yuri shoves him forward.

“Go hug your mom, asshole. When’s dinner?”

Hiroko answers in English over Yuuri’s shoulder, beaming. “Any time you’re hungry. We made katsudon for the champions. Congratulations to you, too, Yurio! And to you, Vicchan! It’s wonderful to see you both again. How was the trip?”

“Lovely as always, Mama Katsuki,” Victor says. “I’ll just take our bags up. Yuuri will be staying with me, of course— is the banquet room free again? Yurio, help me carry.”

“Of course! That room is yours now. Mari! Come help Vicchan with the bags!”

They get settled in short order, Hiroko and Toshiya feed them until they’re fit to burst, and another stay in Hasetsu begins. This one promises to be better than Yuri’s last.

Otabek arrives the following Monday, late in the evening.

Victor insists on bringing everyone along to pick him up at Hasetsu station, so they’ve got a small crowd waiting in the main lobby—Yuri, Victor, Yuuri, Minako, and Mari—when Otabek appears at the top of the escalator. He looks worn out as he descends, tugging a wheeled suitcase behind him, his usual leather jacket nowhere in evidence. His hair is plane-sweat limp and he’s got the waxy complexion people always get when they’ve just spent almost 14 hours in transit. He’s still one of the best things Yuri has ever seen.

“Hi, Beka!” Yuri calls, unable to contain his grin. “How was the flight?”

“Long,” Otabek replies as he approaches, “but fine. Good to see you, Yura.” They don’t hug. Yuri kind of wants to hug. Otabek comes up next to him and leans their shoulders together, though, and that’s almost as good.

“Good to see you again, Otabek,” Victor cuts in, smiling and bright like usual. “You remember Minako and Mari, yes?”

Otabek nods hello and both women return it, still a bit starry-eyed. This reaction isn’t as bad, but they were both such an embarrassment in Barcelona, crying with happiness all over the table when everyone crashed Yuri’s evening with Otabek. Yuri’s still annoyed about that — the party-crashing, not the crying. He’s largely used to the second one.

The usual greetings and pleasantries are passed around, and then Yuuri says, “Come on, it’s late; let’s head back,” and they all set out.

Yuri is unprepared for how thrilled he is that Otabek’s here; he wants to take him through downtown Hasetsu as soon as possible, show him the creepy statue of the squid and urchin, wander through the shopping district and get his opinions on all the vendors. Take him to the onsen and watch him soak up the heat of the water, chase out the last lingering chill of winter from his joints. Introduce him to Yuuko and the three Nishigori hellions.

It’s a little overwhelming, how much he wants. He can see signs of Otabek’s fatigue but he can’t seem to slow down his mouth, chattering away as they make their way back to Yu-topia Katsuki on foot.

Victor keeps throwing amused glances at him, but Otabek is smiling in his understated way — small, but still larger than the smile he gives anyone else — so Yuri hefts his chin dismissively in Victor’s direction and continues his story about the lion statue he found behind the ninja house.

A thought occurs, and Yuri interrupts himself. “Beka, who’s watching Oberon?”

“Anara,” Otabek replies. “I’ve told you about her, right? My neighbor?” When Yuri shakes his head, Otabek continues, “She’s a student at the university and she has a cat back at home, so she doesn’t mind cat-sitting for me when I'm away. Don’t worry, Oberon’s getting the royal treatment.” At Yuri’s skeptical look, he digs out his phone and taps through to his photo gallery, then turns the screen toward Yuri. “Here, his latest toy.”

“Why didn’t you send the picture when you took it?”

“I wanted to see your face when you saw it.” He offers his phone again. Yuri draws it closer.

On the screen is a sharp closeup of Oberon’s fluffy face. Trapped between his tufted paws and bending under the force of teeth, there’s a familiar silver sparkle topped with pale yellow fabric. “Is that…”

Otabek smiles, just a little, mischievous.

“Beka! You gave him a plush of _me?”_

It’s the commemorative one from the ISU; they did a series of mini plush dolls of all the medalists from this year’s major competitions. At the time Yuri had thought it was stupid and gimmicky, but seeing it made into a cat toy puts a new spin on things. Oberon has shredded all the visible edges of plush-Yuri’s Agape costume and pulled wisps of stuffing through the holes.

“It’s destroyed!”

“What, you _don’t_ want to be the one keeping him entertained? I thought you’d be flattered.”

Yuri punches him in the shoulder. Then he grabs the phone again for closer inspection. “He ripped my arm off!”

Otabek snickers, the traitor. Yuri carefully ignores the lurch in his chest at the sound.

Yuuri and Victor are staying in the banquet room Victor used last time, so Yuri had set up in Yuuri’s old room, where Otabek now joins him. Otabek insists he can sleep on the futon on the floor, no matter how much Yuri tries to convince him otherwise; Otabek is one of a very select few who can out-stubborn him, so eventually Yuri gives in and takes the bed.

The next day, Yuri wears his tiger shirt. It seems only appropriate.

“I bought it here,” he tells Otabek, “on my first day, before I’d even found where Victor was staying. It's so cool, Beka, look.”

“Very cool,” Otabek says agreeably.

“You're laughing at me. I can tell. No, really, this is the _best shirt_ and you can't convince me otherwise. It’s so cool that I had to instagram it and give myself away to Yakov.”

Then Otabek truly laughs at him, all quiet under his breath in that Otabek way.

As in all good port towns, Hasetsu days typically dawn misty, overcast by a layer of marine fog that burns off by noon. Yuri and Otabek leave the onsen in the muted gray of midmorning to explore the town, just the two of them. Yuri has no ulterior motive in taking them to the Kyomachi shopping arcade; it's not premeditated, either, it’s just that he remembers how to get there without referencing a map, so it's the first place his feet try to take him and a moment of consideration has him following the impulse. Wandering that shopping arcade was one of his first experiences in Japan and somehow it seems important that Otabek experience it, too.

He leads Otabek along winding streets, retracing his steps from when he first came to Hasetsu in search of his missing rinkmate. It feels like forever since he was here last, but it’s the same time of year again and the cherry blossoms are the same. When they finally reach Kyomachi, there’s bright sunlight filtering through the glass roof of the arcade, and that’s the same, too. The stalls are bustling with midday traffic.

“Hey, Yura,” says Otabek, on their second, more leisurely lap around the shops. “Guess what I found.”

Yuri looks, and then has to look again because Otabek is standing in front of a very familiar booth holding a very familiar shirt up to his torso.

“Hngk,” Yuri says, and clears his throat. “That’s— um.”

“Only 1300 yen,” Otabek says. “Not bad. What do you think? I wanted a souvenir from this trip.”

“Shirts are… good souvenirs.” Yuri's voice is hopelessly scratchy. _Oh shit,_ his brain screeches, _Otabek wearing the tiger shirt._ God, he really wants to see that. It’s a squirming feeling in his gut like he’s been filled with eels, which is a gross mental image that somehow doesn’t at all reduce the need eating him alive.

“Yeah, I should get it,” Otabek says, oblivious to Yuri's eel crisis. He smiles that tiny, teasing, devastating smile again. “We can match. We'll both be cool.”

That night, Otabek wears the shirt down to dinner. Every time the tiger face peeks out from the open front of his yukata, Yuri feels his lungs squeeze.

_Unfair,_ he thinks, hopelessly flustered.

“Oi, Katsudon!” Yuri shouts when they reach the dining room, keeping his eyes away from Otabek’s chest. “Are we having katsudon? Beka’s never tried it.”

“Of course,” Yuuri replies, smiling at Victor, who is raising a cup of sake at him.

“Yuuri won gold at Worlds; he gets katsudon for a month,” Victor says with a grin, then cries “Kanpai!” and drains his cup.

Yuuri laughs. “You’re supposed to wait for me for that.”

“Oh god,” Yuri moans under his breath, turning to stuff his face into Otabek’s shoulder. The position leaves him still unable to see the tiger on Otabek’s chest; that makes it okay. “They’re going to be like this all night.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Otabek replies, low.

“You haven’t seen it in person. Video doesn’t do it justice.”

“Yurio!” Hiroko says, entering with a tray. “And Otabek! Oh, look at that. I take it the shopping went well. You two got matching shirts?” She’s all smiles, steering them to seats. Yuri glances over and yes, there’s the tiger shirt peeking out the front of Otabek’s yukata, and there goes his breath catching again.

Otabek nods gravely. “Yura has good taste, and I wanted a souvenir.”

“Of course. Yurio is very fashionable.” She smiles and sets down a bowl. “Here, this can be a kind of souvenir, too: our famous katsudon. It’s Yuuri’s favorite,” she adds conspiratorially, as though everyone in the world doesn’t know that Yuuri considers katsudon to be the height of desire. “And here—”

She lays out a spread of dishes in front of each of them, naming each one though Yuri can only remember a few of them by the time she’s done, then heads back for another tray to load down Victor and Yuuri’s table.

“Try that one, it’s amazing,” Yuri tells Otabek, pointing with his chopsticks to a deep-fried tofu dish he recognizes from his last stay. “Ooh, and the pickled radish, and— you know what, just try everything.”

“I had planned on that, yes,” Otabek says, giving him a teasing look from the side of his eye.

Everything is delicious, and the evening is surprisingly peaceful — Yuuri and Victor are steadily working their way through their second bottle of sake, but they’re saving their antics for each other and largely leaving him and Otabek out of it, thank goodness — but the thing that makes Yuri’s body feel weightless and his cheeks flush is how much Otabek loves it. Watching him enjoy his dinner makes something smug and proprietary swell in Yuri’s chest.

Otabek likes the things Yuri has introduced him to. He approves of Yuri’s taste. That feels momentous, somehow.

And he’s wearing the _tiger shirt._

“Okay, no, really,” Yuri says at one point, chuckling and leaning on Otabek’s shoulder, “you have to try the katsudon. I know we give the piggy a hard time about it, but I get why he’s so obsessed.”

Otabek picks up the bowl and takes a bite of pork and egg. Yuri can’t help but laugh aloud at the look of surprised joy that overtakes Otabek’s face.

“This is incredible,” Otabek says when he swallows. “Oh my god.”

“Right?” _He likes it,_ Yuri thinks, that proprietary feeling warming him again. _He’s wearing the tiger shirt and he likes katsudon._ “Just wait until you try katsudon piroshki. Grandpa invented it.”

“Yura. Why have you not introduced this to me before now?”

Yuri snorts. “Uh, because you live way too far away? And I can’t send actual food through text?”

“That’s no excuse.” A smile lifts the corners of Otabek’s mouth and Yuri feels that squirming-eel sensation come back. It’s deeply uncomfortable. He refuses to examine the feeling any further.

After the meal, Hiroko rebuffs Otabek’s attempt to help clear away the dishes, and so Yuri stands up with him as, at the other table, Victor and Yuuri fall all over each other in an embarrassing display of inebriated affection. If Yuri and Otabek are to make an escape, it’ll need to be soon.

“Why are you wearing pants?” Victor asks. “Why am _I_ wearing pants? This is a conspiracy.”

“We’re in public,” Yuuri protests feebly, cheeks red and eyes glassy with drink. “You have to keep your clothes on in public. We— Victor!” Yuuri laughs as Victor starts pawing at his clothes. “We made a rule, remember?”

“We’re in Hasetsu! This is a hot spring! There is no place more appropriate to be pantsless, Yuuri. Besides, it’s just Yura and Otabek. They don’t mind.”

“I mind very much,” Yuri retorts tartly, then turns to Otabek. “Hot spring?” he asks, as quiet as he can so as not to attract further attention.

“Sure.”

This may have been a bad idea. Once they’re climbing into the water, the thing Yuri has been avoiding thinking about for so long can no longer be denied. Yuri feels that flutter again, those eels in his stomach, and he looks at Otabek, and the mental wall he’s built comes crumbling down.

Otabek is hot like burning.

Yuri knew that, in the abstract, before. Otabek has classic bad-boy good looks, what with the leather jacket and the motorcycle and the dark, brooding eyes and the undercut. And of course he’s amazing, too; he’s Yuri’s best friend — Yuri’s _only_ friend, or the only one he made by himself and not through rink circumstance. Otabek is kind and funny and surprisingly earnest and has the driest sass, he’s a cat person, he’s competitive but still makes Yuri feel supported. He spurs Yuri to be _better._ He’s amazing.

But now, seeing Otabek stepping naked into the steaming water, all thick quads and toned shoulders and dark hair and a very tiny towel discarded on the rocks — and Yuri is _not looking at his dick,_ nope, that’s not happening — those two facts are colliding in an inescapable way: Otabek is hot. Otabek is amazing.

Yuri is fucked.

Mila was right. Mila was right and Yuri has a crush, maybe something more than a crush — though that’s an idea he’s not going to even think of entertaining — and he is utterly _fucked._ He just climbed naked into a hot spring with an equally naked Otabek and he can’t even enjoy the water properly because he’s busy having an internal crisis.

He likes Otabek. Apparently he also _likes_ Otabek, but… well, he’s not sure what to think about that quite yet. Looking back, though, it’s been obvious for a while.

No wonder Mila was teasing him.

“Oh wow, this feels nice,” Otabek says, and Yuri has to shake himself from his thoughts, hoping the heat is enough to explain his blush. _Still not looking at his dick,_ he tells himself. _Or his pecs. Or his arms._

That doesn’t leave much to look at, since he also can’t really look him in the eye right now, so he tries to turn his gaze out toward the bamboo.

“Yeah,” he says, “the hot spring is one of my favorite things here. It’s heaven on sore muscles, too. Way better than a bathtub.” The bamboo is too boring; Yuri finds his eyes drawn back. He casts about for some other reason not to watch, because Otabek is settling back against the wall with a groan and the water is lapping distractingly at his collar bones, making his skin glisten. “Hey, we can go to the rink tomorrow if you want, just fuck around on skates for a while and then come back and soak. What do you think?”

Otabek is pink from the heat, too, and his eyes are serious and fond when he looks over. “That sounds good, Yura. I’d like to skate with you.”

“Yeah,” Yuri croaks, and sinks lower in the water.

> **Mila**
> 
> [Sent 22:12]  
> fuck i do have a crush
> 
> [Sent 22:12]  
> dont you dare say i told you so, hag, just tell me what the fuck to DO
> 
> [Received 22:13]  
> It’s 4am here jerk, go to sleep
> 
> [Sent 22:13]  
> cant
> 
> [Sent 22:13]  
> he just fell asleep
> 
> [Sent 22:13]  
> and we were in the hot spring earlier
> 
> [Sent 22:14]  
> and hes so fucking hot mila i dnt know what to do
> 
> [Sent 22:14]  
> how did i miss this
> 
> [Sent 22:14]  
> i mean i knew he was hot but
> 
> [Sent 22:14]  
> fuck fuck ffucking hell what
> 
> [Received 22:15]  
> Denial is a powerful drug
> 
> [Sent 22:15]  
> help
> 
> [Sent 22:15]  
> i saw him naked
> 
> [Received 22:16]  
> Lucky 😏👅
> 
> [Received 22:16]  
> Send pics
> 
> [Sent 22:17]  
> god youre gross
> 
> [Sent 22:17]  
> just for that you dont get an invite to japan next time
> 
> [Received 22:18]  
> Awww, spoilsport
> 
> [Sent 22:18]  
> but he bought a tiger shirt today
> 
> [Sent 22:18]  
>  that matches mine
> 
> [Sent 22:18]  
> he wore it at dinner and i almost died
> 
> [Received 22:19]  
> If you’re not going to send pics, then put on your big boy pants and make a move or suck it up and pine in silence. Either way let me go back to sleeeeeep

The next day, Yuri and Otabek end up talking choreography at the rink, which is distracting enough that Yuri only gets mental flashes of Otabek naked in the hot spring every few minutes instead of every few seconds. Yuri sets up the Ice Tiger album to play from his phone and goes over some of the combinations they’d talked about that night in Helsinki, and then Otabek starts chiming in with ideas and in short order they’ve got the bones of a program laid out. Like it's Barcelona all over again. They make a hell of a team.

Otabek skates the choreography with him, the two of them perfectly in synch, easily in touching distance. It could almost be a pairs routine.

Then Otabek skates closer and it really is almost a pairs routine.

“Beka?” Yuri asks, slowing nearly to a stop.

“Here, try this,” Otabek replies, coming up right behind him to catch him gently by the wrist. Yuri can feel the heat of him radiating through their clothes, that’s how close they are. The warmth of his body is vibrant in the cold rink air.

Otabek moves closer still, then pushes off to the right into a basic arabesque and Yuri instinctively follows.

“A spiral?”

“Don’t you think it would go well here?” Otabek asks, his voice bare inches from Yuri’s ear. “Take your pick what type.”

“I… yeah. Maybe a Biellmann?” But Yuri doesn’t lift his free leg any higher, just lets Otabek lead him in a low arabesque spiral, the curve wide but their bodies tight. The music plays on and Otabek is right behind him with one hand on Yuri’s waist and the other holding his hand, their skates aligned perfectly, moving so fluidly together it’s like they practiced it for weeks. He doesn’t do pairs, but with Otabek…

“Then tighten into a spin, and back into the step sequence like before,” Otabek says, his voice a little rough as he lowers his free leg and pulls away. “What do you think?”

“Yeah,” Yuri breathes. “I like it.”

Otabek retreats across the ice again, and Yuri is probably imagining it but he seems almost reluctant to leave. Trying to push that thought away to deal with later and to ignore the breathlessness Otabek left him with, Yuri runs through the choreography one more time, marking the jumps so he can play with transitions, swapping a section of footwork and a spin. His head’s not really with it, though; he keeps replaying that spiral and the way he and Otabek moved so fluidly together. Why is Otabek so attractive? Why is he so perfect?

_It’s just a crush, it’ll go away._

When the song ends, Yuri glides to a stop at the side boards. “God, Lilia’s going to gut this whole thing when I get back to Russia,” he moans.

“Maybe,” Otabek concedes from mid-rink where he’s running through counter turn drills, “but she should let you keep the soul of it. It’s a good program, Yura. Rough right now, but good.”

“I hope she lets me skate to this music at all.”

“She does seem kind of strict,” Otabek says, skating up to him.

Yuri barks a laugh. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it. You know how ballet teachers are always crazy strict? Yeah? Well, Lilia taught the ballet teachers.”

“Oh,” Otabek says, his eyes widening.

“Exactly. Anyway, I’m sick of this. Let’s work on something for you. Do you have any thoughts on your next season?”

“Some, but nothing concrete yet. My coach and I are still trying to pick music.”

“I have some songs you might like.” Yuri has been collecting his favorites for Otabek ever since he received Otabek’s album, but he’s not admitting that to him. God, he’s been so oblivious. “Want to hear?”

“Sure,” Otabek replies, leaning on the side board right next to Yuri’s shoulder. He’s so close that their elbows touch. Almost close enough to kiss. Yuri tries to ignore it, but he’s pretty sure he’s flushing a bit; Otabek looks good in his practice clothes.

After a moment too long spent staring, Yuri shakes himself and asks, “Do you have a theme yet?”

“Striving, I think.” Otabek tilts his head. “Subject to coach’s approval, of course.”

“Of course,” Yuri echoes, wondering. Striving for what? Yuri’s traitorous brain tosses up a whole bunch of things he could be striving for, Yuri himself chief among them, which is just… no, that’s not— Yuri isn’t ready to go there, yet. He might be coming to uncomfortable terms with the fact that he really does have a pathetic crush on Otabek, but that doesn’t mean he wants to _do_ anything about it, besides wishing for it to go away. Otabek’s probably not into him, anyway.

Besides, Otabek is important to him; making things awkward is the last thing he wants, especially while they’re sharing a room on a three-week vacation.

God, he itches to ask, though. _What are you doing? Does this mean what I think it does? You pulled a pairs move on me a few minutes ago; there’s no way that was totally innocent. Except maybe it was._

He doesn’t want to feel like this, doesn’t want the flutter in his stomach or the heat in his cheeks or the way he’s so easily distracted by that one rebellious lock of hair that likes to fall over Otabek’s forehead.

He didn’t ask for this.

Fuck, and now he’s stayed silent too long again. “Okay,” he says, “Striving. I can find something for that.” He jabs at his phone with too much force, pulling up his Otabek playlist, then plays the first acceptable song, failing to maintain a scowl in the face of his satisfaction when Otabek begins nodding to the beat.

“I like it.”

_He likes it._ Like he liked the shirt; like he liked the katsudon. The stupid, flustered eels are back. Yuri furiously ignores them and tries to focus on the music, but mostly succeeds in staring moonily at Otabek’s profile as Otabek listens.

“Here, this part—” Yuri says as a particular turn of melody reminds him, “yeah, do an axel there, don’t you think?”

Otabek tilts his head. “Play that part again?”

Yuri obliges, then watches, rapt, as Otabek nods slowly, shifting his arms like he’s working out positions in his head.

“Good call,” Otabek says after a moment. “Send me this song, please?”

They let it play through, then Yuri pulls up the next, grinning when Otabek likes that one, too.

“Hey, Otabek,” Yuri says late that night. They’ve already gone to bed and now Yuri is staring up at the ceiling in the dark bedroom, listening to Otabek rustle around on the futon below him and hoping for a distraction so he doesn’t start thinking about the hot spring again. “Tell me something.”

“…Okay, like what?”

“I don’t know, tell me…” Yuri rolls onto his side and looks over the edge at Otabek. “Ooh, tell me something about when you were training in Canada. Give me dirt on JJ.”

“You don’t want to know about the food?” Otabek asks, turning from his own contemplation of the ceiling to raise his eyebrows at Yuri. There’s just enough ambient light coming through the window that Yuri can make out the amused expression. “Or the parks, or anything else?”

“I’ve been to Canada before; I know about the food and the trees and whatever. No, I want something I can use against that asshole so he stops bothering me. He’s always calling me ‘princess’ and shit. I hate it.”

“He does have a talent for getting under people’s skin.”

Yuri snorts. “Fucking _understatement._ Does he have, like, a really embarrassing dating history or something? A string of awful girlfriends I can needle him about?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t think he’d be bothered by the mention of them. His fiancé might mind, but I think he’s just proud of himself.”

It’s probably a question he’ll regret, but Yuri asks, “Did you date when you were there?”

“No.” No elaboration. Which, to be honest, is often par for the course with Otabek.

“What about elsewhere?” Yuri asks before he can stop himself.

“Not for a long time.” He doesn’t sound angry, but he does sound very closed-off. Okay, so he’s not into dating, apparently. Yuri folds that away in his mind and tries even harder to shove down his inconvenient crush.

He’s still contemplating the ramifications when Otabek says, “Kazumi’s set is tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Yuri replies. “You’re heading out in the morning, right? I’ll walk you to the station.”

Kazumi is Otabek’s DJ friend. She’s playing at a club in Kitakyushu, which is a little over two hours by train from Hasetsu, and some of her and Otabek’s mutual friends are in the area, too, so Otabek made plans to stay there overnight and catch up with them.

Yuri doesn’t wish he’d been invited. He doesn’t. It’s not like he knows the girl, and he couldn’t get into the club she’s playing at anyway. There’s not much chance he could manage the same kind of stunt he pulled off in Barcelona and sneak in — the drinking age is higher here, so he’s less likely to be mistaken for old enough.

The one plus side is that he gets to have a breakdown about his stupid crush in private.

As promised, Yuri walks Otabek to the train station in the morning, waiting with him until the train arrives and watching him board. Then the train pulls away, and Yuri stands there looking after it until it’s out of sight.

_It’s a crush,_ Yuri tells himself, _it’s a stupid little crush and you’re going to get over it by the time he gets back._

If only he could believe that.

He doesn’t want a crush. It’s uncomfortable, it keeps interrupting his time with Otabek, and it’s beneath his goddamn dignity. He wants to hang out with his best friend without the annoying flutter in his chest. Besides, even if he did want to do something about these irritating feelings, he wouldn’t; there’s no way Otabek feels the same, and Yuri has put too much effort into their friendship to damage it now. He’s had a taste of that before and he never wants to repeat the experience.

He’s just going to ignore all the flutters and thoughts and everything else about this stupid crush until it fades.

It had _better_ fade.

He spends much of the day at the rink, running through the choreography he and Otabek put together for Constellations Reflected on a Green Sea and trying not to think about how much he likes that Otabek collaborated with him on it. Hell, Otabek even wrote the song. ( _About your eyes,_ Yuri’s brain offers, and he’s not thinking about that, either.) Yuri’s whole next season is going to be tied up with memories of the two of them laughing together at Worlds, and choreographing that program for Welcome to the Madness on the Barcelona shoreline, and working through combinations at Ice Castle Hasetsu.

And every time he does that spiral, he’s going to feel the phantom warmth of Otabek at his back.

Yeah, getting over this stupid crush is going _swimmingly._


	5. Chapter 5

Otabek won’t be back until late the following day, and not even Yuri can maintain a sullen snit for that long. By the end of the first day, when the selfie arrives, Yuri has spent dinner engaging in his usual pastime of ribbing Yuuri and Victor, taken a bath — private this time, since Otabek isn’t there — and retired to bed to carefully not think about naked skin in the onsen or dark eyes behind sunglasses or motorcycle rides around Barcelona or Helsinki or anywhere else they might end up.

Of course, all the self-restraint in the world wouldn’t stand up in the face of the selfie he receives, and Yuri doesn’t have much self-restraint to begin with.

Otabek is apparently joining Kazumi behind the mixing boards for the evening. In the first picture, Kazumi is standing over the boards with teal-dyed hair and big DJ headphones like Otabek’s; she’s wearing a t-shirt bearing what Yuri assumes is a band logo.

But the second picture, oh. The selfie.

Otabek is lit by the stage lights, which are low and mostly neon-colored, with Kazumi just visible over his shoulder. He’s smiling at the camera with that tiny grin that just pulls up one corner of his mouth, and he’s wearing the most hideous argyle sweater that Yuri has ever seen. It’s dark fabric, though the club lights make it hard to tell if the base is brown or navy blue, but the pattern is definitely orange. It looks like something someone’s grandfather would have thrown away for being too heinous a crime against— forget _fashion,_ too heinous a crime against the whole concept of _clothing._

Otabek’s shirt collar pokes out the top. His hair is styled back and his eyes dance under his dark brows. He's wearing _fucking argyle_ and he's still gorgeous enough to give Yuri heart palpitations.

> **🕶️ Beka 🕶️**
> 
> [Sent 22:17]  
> beka.
> 
> [Sent 23:17]  
> what are you wearing.
> 
> [Received 23:17]  
> Do you like it?
> 
> [Sent 23:18]  
> its hideous, you look 90
> 
> [Sent 23:18]  
> did you hike your pants up to your armpits too?
> 
> [Received 23:18]  
> Don't lie, Yura, you love it

Yuri, furious at his stupid hormones for making argyle look attractive, hunts through a Google image search until he finds the worst photo he can of some geriatric fashion disaster, then sends it to Otabek. This beige argyle tracksuit is an abomination that should have been ruthlessly culled when they had the chance — and god, at least his brain hasn’t gone _completely_ haywire. Argyle is only attractive on Otabek.

‘this is you,’ he types.

Otabek replies with a picture of a middle-aged woman in what might be a Street Fighter cosplay except that it's entirely leopard print.

> **🕶️ Beka 🕶️**
> 
> [Sent 23:21]  
> beka no
> 
> [Received 23:22]  
> Beka yes.

There ensues a google image war for the ages. Yuri finds every single photo he can of awful sweaters on nonagenarians and Otabek responds with ill-fitting leopard print spandex and bad perms. It’s terrible. Yuri finally concedes, so Otabek switches to artsy, street fashion shots of attractive young hipster punks in cable knit and leather, too many of whom have dark hair styled in undercuts. It’s doing awkward things to Yuri’s insides; apparently he has a type.

Then Otabek sends another selfie, still in the terrible sweater, showing off his mussed hair and dark eyes and painfully attractive smirk, with the mixing boards in the background and beyond them the tight-packed crowd. Yuri swallows.

> **🕶️ Beka 🕶️**
> 
> [Received 23:35]  
> It’s busy tonight
> 
> [Sent 23:35]  
> damn its crowded there
> 
> [Received 23:36]  
> Everyone loves Kazumi

_Even you?_ Yuri thinks. But no, this trip was the first Yuri had heard of her; surely if Otabek were interested in her, he’d have mentioned her before now. Yuri is— being _jealous,_ jesus. Fuck this crush. It’s nothing, it’s unwelcome, and it’s going to go away before Otabek gets back.

‘She’s very popular in the local scene,’ Otabek continues, and something tight unwinds between Yuri’s lungs at the impersonal phrasing.

He turns on the front camera on his phone and takes a selfie of his own — he tousles his hair until it looks intentional instead of like he’s been stuffing his head under his pillow in a failed attempt to keep his mind off Otabek — and sends it.

> **🕶️ Beka 🕶️**
> 
> [Received 23:38]  
> In bed already?
> 
> [Sent 23:38]  
> its boring here without you
> 
> [Sent 23:38]  
> im becoming an old man in your absence
> 
> [Sent 23:39]  
> come back already
> 
> [Received 23:39]  
> Tomorrow, Yura. Have some patience
> 
> [Sent 23:39]  
> patience is overrated
> 
> [Sent 23:39]  
> you having fun tho?
> 
> [Received 23:40]  
> Yeah, I’m glad I came out. But I’ll be glad to be back with you, too

Yuri’s pulse trips over itself. Otabek is a fucking cheesy bastard.

_He’s not into you,_ Yuri tells himself again. _And you’re getting_ rid _of this crush, remember? Just act normal. Be his friend._

He saves the picture, though, terrible sweater and all, and if he stares at it for a while, well, at least it's not the mental image of him in the hot spring.

Damn it.

The second day of Otabek’s absence drags along. Yuri’s already run through the new choreography they were working on too many times — “Yuri, this is a vacation!” Victor tells him, to which Yuri scoffs and Yuuri laughs a self-deprecating little laugh, because they’re all too driven to really take time off. But Victor has a point. Yuri can’t skate every day, and it’s not nearly so fun to skate this program without Otabek here to work on it with him.

So Yuri finds himself at loose ends. He pokes around the city for a while, goes for a walk along the shoreline, and generally mopes around, though if anyone else tries to call it moping he’ll kick them. He tries his luck at the rink that afternoon anyway, but Yuuko grins at him so knowingly that he gives up and leaves again.

He just… he misses Otabek.

God. He needs to get this whole feelings situation under control. Mila said either make a move or suck it up and do nothing, and Yuri is decidedly in favor of doing nothing rather than risking alienating his best friend.

Wandering the city, however, just reminds him of all the things he still wants to show Otabek, and the shore reminds him of Barcelona and their night out at the club, and all of it is conspiring against him. He can’t stop thinking about Otabek, about his smile, about his voice, about how he looked at dinner when he wore the tiger shirt.

He can ignore it, he can ignore it, he can get over this shit if he can just _ignore it—_

No, he can’t.

Yuri got to the train station half an hour early, so he sees Otabek before Otabek sees him.

“Beka! Over here!”

The crowd isn’t too thick, so Otabek quickly makes his way over, catching Yuri up in a tight hug. “Hey, Yura. Missed you.”

Yuri can feel himself flushing, but he hugs back just as tightly. He can’t help but savor the contact. “Yeah, um, missed you, too. Did you have a good trip?”

“Yeah,” Otabek says, releasing him and turning toward the exits. “Kazumi is doing well there, and it was good to see Ito and Sonya. I’m glad to be back, though.”

“I’m glad you’re back, too. It really is boring without you.”

If Yuri’s not mistaken, Otabek blushes faintly at that, but they’re walking and the light isn’t great in here so it’s hard to tell. Something in Yuri wants to believe, though.

“So, hey,” he says, stomping on that ridiculous hopeful feeling, “it’s not too late yet. You want to do something? Besides skating; I’ve been informed that we’re supposed to be on vacation and Yuuko is starting to give me pitying looks, which is just stupid considering she runs a goddamn rink.”

“She likes you, Yura; she just wants you to relax.”

“I’ll relax once I’m retired. But anyway, yeah, we should do something.”

“We could go out to dinner,” Otabek offers casually.

Yuri has to bite his tongue to stop the first response that wants to fly from his mouth, because it’s _not_ ‘like a date’. He doesn’t want it to be like a date. He’s trying to get over this crush, not stoke it further. “Yeah,” he says instead, “let’s do that. Did you have someplace in mind?”

“Nowhere in particular. Let’s ask Katsuki for recommendations.”

“As long as he doesn’t try to tag along. I’ve had enough of people crashing our— uh, our dinners.”

“You think he would?”

“Well, no, probably not.” Yuri scowls. “Vitya absolutely would, though. We’ll have to be sneaky—”

“Yura,” Otabek interrupts. “It doesn’t matter. Come to dinner with me, okay?”

“…Okay.”

It would be a lot easier to squash the feelings if Otabek didn’t say things like that, things that sound like ‘date’.

They sidestep the whole Victor issue by asking Yuuko instead, since their return route takes them past Ice Castle Hasetsu. She directs them to a ramen house a few blocks away.

“Are you hungry now?” Yuri asks, and Otabek nods. “Yuuko will let you leave your bag here. Let’s go eat.”

“Have fun!” Yuuko tells them. “I’ll be locking up at 9, so make sure you’re back before then or your bag will be stuck here until tomorrow.”

“Thanks, we will be,” Otabek promises, then waves and leads the way to the door.

“Bye, Yuuko!” Yuri calls out. “Don’t let the girls find the instant coffee I left in the snack bar!”

There’s a chorus of ooh’s from the triplets, and Yuuko’s sharp order to, “Stay out of there, girls! No coffee!” follows them out onto the street.

“You’re a troublemaker, Yura,” Otabek says admiringly.

“And? It’s decaf; I’m not _that_ mean.”

Otabek laughs, and the sound warms Yuri right down to his toes.

It’s not a long walk from Ice Castle to the ramen house, and the place turns out to be the kind of casual eatery that Yuri can appreciate. They order, talk over cups of tea, and slurp heartily once their noodles arrive.

It doesn’t feel like a date, though. Which is good. It just feels like two friends going out for excellent ramen. (It _could_ be a date, Yuri’s heart reminds him, and he firmly ignores it.) Otabek tells him about the trip, about the club, about Kazumi’s cat, about the globetrotters Ito and Sonya and their recent trip to Brazil. He’s animated and his dark eyes sparkle as he gestures to illustrate a point.

He’s gorgeous. Yuri’s insides flutter once again.

_Not doing that,_ Yuri tells himself fiercely. _Nope, getting_ over _this crush, he’s not into you and you’re not supposed to be into him, either._

He doesn’t even know if Otabek likes guys. Not that that fucking matters because Yuri isn't going to do anything about it anyway.

As they near the bottom of their bowls, Otabek starts to droop. He’s exhausted his stories of the club and now Yuri is carrying more of the conversation, but when Otabek yawns widely and immediately looks embarrassed about it, Yuri calls it a night.

“Come on, you’re beat,” Yuri says, standing. “Let’s get back so you can sleep.”

“Sorry, Yura. I wanted to stay out longer, but I guess that’s not happening.”

“We’ve still got two weeks here. It’s fine. We’ll go out tomorrow.” Yuri grins. “I’ve still got shopping malls to show you. I need your help with another outfit.”

“Like Barcelona?” Otabek asks, eyebrows rising with interest.

“Exactly like Barcelona. Except there’s no gala to skate at, but whatever. I need some good fashion.”

He settles the bill and they head back to Ice Castle to pick up Otabek’s bag, where Otabek compliments Yuuko’s choice of restaurant so earnestly that it makes her blush, and then they continue on to Yuutopia Katsuki.

The night air is cool with a nip of early spring still, despite how far into April they are. Yuri huddles into his thin leopard print jacket. He still loves the thing, but it’s meant for layering; he should have worn long sleeves under it.

“Cold?” Otabek asks.

“Eh, a little. I’m fine, though.”

“Come here.” Otabek holds out an arm, and okay, good god, that’s a date move. No two ways about it. Furious at how much he’s blushing but soldiering on regardless, Yuri tucks close against Otabek’s side. He’s not going to turn down an offer like that, no matter how much his insides are buzzing with conflicting glee and anxiety.

Otabek wraps his arm around him, and they walk in step for a ways, silently watching the scenery. The trees are blooming and petals scatter in the gentle breeze, lit up as they pass through the beams of street lights.

That night, glaring at the ceiling while Otabek sleeps silently on the futon, Yuri turns his contemplation inward. It’s becoming obvious that he’s never getting over this crush, so he needs to figure out what he wants to do about it.

Except… would it really be so bad to like Otabek? He’s fought this feeling tooth and fucking nail from the moment it cropped up, but Otabek is the only person Yuri has ever been this close with. Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe he and Otabek…

_Take it in small steps,_ he tells himself. Does he want to date Otabek? It’s one thing to find him attractive and another to want to, say, kiss him. Be in a relationship with him.

Oh, fuck. Kissing.

As soon as the thought crosses Yuri’s mind, he knows he wants it. His imagination takes the idea and runs, and he makes an involuntary little groaning noise that hopefully Otabek is too far asleep to hear. God, he wants to make out with Otabek like the horniest of teenagers; he wants to make out with him on a bed and touch him all over and then make out some more. And listen to the album Otabek made for him. And maybe cuddle; the hugs they’ve shared have been warm, solid things and Yuri would like to experience the full-body version.

The full-body, naked version, too.

Fuck. This is where all this was leading, wasn’t it? Otabek’s quietly determined manner, his good looks, his surprising, gentlemanly charm that makes his dry humor all the more appealing, that damn medal selfie he took that made Yuri’s pulse pound. It all led here.

To that ramen house, of all places.

To that not-a-date.

To Otabek with his arm around Yuri to protect him from the cold.

Add that to the list of things Yuri can’t get out of his head as he lies awake, thoughts circling. Now he keeps imagining what might have happened if Otabek had leaned closer, how their lips might have touched, how Yuri might have curled into Otabek’s chest and tucked himself inside that leather jacket as they kissed right there on the street.

And they could go out to dinner again, as a real date this time, and they could walk home and Otabek would tuck him into his jacket again. Maybe his hands would wander a little as they walked back. That’d be awesome.

Small steps? Nope, Yuri is at two hundred kilometers per hour from the start. Otabek is his best friend and he’s hot like burning, as thoroughly evidenced in the hot spring. Yuri likes him. Yuri likes him and this crush is obviously not going away. This… _more_ than a crush is not going away.

Crushes are light, breezy. What Yuri feels is steady and firm, a warm weight in the core of him, this swell of affection and longing and that squirming feeling like eels whenever Otabek looks at him in that particular, gently teasing way and god, _crush_ is not a strong enough word to describe it.

But he doesn’t want to jeopardize their friendship. That’s the absolute last thing he wants. Even more than Yuri wants to kiss him, he wants Otabek to stick around. To _stay._ He never wants a repeat of that time when Otabek wouldn’t talk to him.

Besides, it’s unlikely that Otabek likes him back, no matter how much Yuri might want him to. Yuri knows he isn’t the easiest person to get along with, let alone _like;_ he’s hotheaded and rude, plus the fact that he’s younger than Otabek, and completely inexperienced, and also kind of an asshole — though Otabek doesn’t seem to mind that last one. But Otabek is good at being friends, even with Yuri, and he’s good at gift-giving, at skating and riding motorcycles and keeping up with Yuri’s weird conversational turns, and— god, he’s good at _everything._ He’s just all-around great. Yuri likes him so much.

Damn it.

Admitting his feelings, though, is probably the fastest way to chase Otabek away. (Even _having_ feelings is not a good idea, but that ship has fucking sailed, bye forever, disappeared over the horizon, and Yuri had no say in the matter.) Otabek won’t talk about dating or exes or anything relationship-wise; Yuri tried that conversation again, just to feel him out a little, and Otabek shut it down just as fast the second time around. As far as Yuri can tell, he’s actively anti-dating.

And here Yuri is with the world’s biggest, most inconvenient crush.

He is so fucked.

Days pass. He and Otabek go out for coffee and lunches and dinners, shop at what must be every single shopping district in the city, and skate whenever the urge strikes — which is often.

The eels show no sign of settling down.

Otabek looks at him over the rim of his coffee cup with that tiny smile of his and Yuri’s insides squirm. Otabek rises in the mornings with ridiculous bedhead and all Yuri wants to do is brush his hair for him. They go for a soak in the hot spring and Yuri can barely feel the water, so focused is he on _not staring,_ because Otabek is made of toned muscle and smooth skin and dark eyes that seem to pierce right through Yuri despite the steam in the air, and it’s utterly unfair to his equilibrium.

He’s at the end of his goddamned rope. Everything Otabek does just stokes his crush further. He doesn’t want to feel like this, doesn’t want to fuck up his friendship with Otabek, doesn’t want to constantly wonder if he’d be rebuffed if he tried to kiss him.

God, kissing. He can’t deny how badly he wants it anymore, not to himself. He’s wants to taste Otabek’s mouth, touch his hair, maybe rub off on him a little. Mutual rubbing. Hell yes. It’s torturous to see Otabek in the hot spring, naked and wet, and try not to react; he doesn’t always succeed and sometimes has to sit awkwardly, his knees pulled up to hide the effect Otabek has on him. It feels obvious, like Otabek is perfectly aware of what’s going on and is just graciously ignoring it.

And when Otabek pushes his damp hair back, or smiles at Yuri, or curls on his side on the futon to talk to him in the darkness of their shared room, Yuri is suffused with a warmth that heats his cheeks and squeezes his lungs and brings that filled-with-eels feeling right back.

This— this _infatuation_ really needs to stop. Yuri is doing his damnedest to kill it, but the thing is like a cockroach. It just won’t die.

“Worst thing to say during a marriage proposal,” Otabek says, gaze serious as he looks at Yuri across their little table in the coffee shop. “Go.”

Yuri has learned to recognize that sparkle in his eyes, though, and he wants to stoke it. “Hmm. How about, ‘My ex said no, so will _you_ marry me?’”

“Oh, that’s good,” Otabek says, chuckling lightly, and Yuri’s heart soars. Otabek looks so good when he laughs.

“Okay, your turn.”

“The worst thing?” Otabek asks, that sparkle still in his eyes. “The wrong name.”

“Oh my god, you win,” Yuri laughs. Otabek chuckles again, the corners of his mouth lifting, and their gazes lock for a long moment as they just sit there smiling at each other. Yuri feels like his lungs are filled with helium. He wants to laugh, not even at the joke but just because Otabek is here and looking at him like that.

Then he remembers himself and breaks their gaze. _It’s not like that,_ he tells himself. _Don’t fuck it up. Don’t. He’s your best friend, and that’s all. That’s plenty._

“Worst thing to say at a funeral,” Yuri says, and glances up to find Otabek still watching him.

Otabek considers for a moment, then affects a shocked tone and says, “Did you just see the body move? I swear he moved.”

“Pfft, _yes._ Okay, um. Go up behind someone and whisper, ‘You're next.’”

_“Yura,”_ Otabek says, now laughing, too. “Start singing Another One Bites The Dust.”

“Tell the family congratulations.”

“Hit on the widow.”

“Jesus, that’s a good one,” Yuri says, all but snorting with laughter. “Look into the casket and say, ‘Damn, they look sexy like that. I’d hit it.’”

“That’s— oh my god, that’s awful. Amazing.”

Yuri grins. “Necrophilia gets them all in the end.”

Otabek dissolves into helpless laughter, that sparkle bright in his eyes, and Yuri smiles to himself. _He_ did that. Even if he won’t allow himself anything more, he can still make Otabek laugh. They’re still best friends. Yuri wants to keep him forever.

An hour later, when they rise to leave, Otabek sticks close beside him — so close that their hands brush as they walk.

Otabek keeps doing this, this _nearness_ thing. At the rink the day before, he demonstrated another idea for Yuri’s program the same way he did that spiral, all closeness and warmth in the cold air with his hands on Yuri and their skates perfectly aligned as they moved over the ice.

It’s maddening. He’s got to be doing it on purpose, but Yuri can’t for the life of him understand why. Did Otabek figure Yuri out? Is this his way of teasing him?

Yuri fumes privately, scared and eager in equal measure, but he never turns down the touch.

The first week flies by, and then suddenly it’s the middle of the second week and their vacation is half over. It hits Yuri while they’re soaking in the hot spring again — and it’s not fair that Otabek looks so good all wet and steamy and in easy touching distance, not that Yuri is going to touch him, that would be weird and not a friendship thing, that would be— anyway. It hits him that after this, Otabek is going back to Almaty and they’ll be back to texting. He won’t get to see Otabek’s bedhead or hear his voice thick with sleep in the mornings. He won’t wake up to the sight of Otabek on the futon next to him. He won’t get to drag him around shopping or go out for coffee with him, won’t get to share a rink with him, won’t get to practice with him.

The thought is painful.

Yuri shrinks in on himself for a moment, an involuntary reaction to hide from the gut punch of emotion, and Otabek glances over.

Yuri glances back, offers a weak smile, and tries to shake it off, because yeah, okay, he’s maybe a little in love with his best friend (god, he really is, isn’t he?) but he’s not going to fuck this up. Otabek is one of the best things to ever happen to him and Yuri is not going to make him uncomfortable, not going to scare him away. He’s not going to mention anything about feelings or anything, because that’s not what they are to each other.

He’s going to enjoy the rest of their time together here in Japan and then he’s going to go back home and be _fine._

He’ll be fine.

“Yura? You okay?”

“Yeah, I'm good,” Yuri says, shrugging one shoulder.

Otabek edges closer. “You seem tense.”

“Just thinking about having to leave. I like it here.” _With you,_ he doesn’t say.

“We still have a week and a half,” Otabek says, and then his hand comes to rest on Yuri’s shoulder and the world narrows in scope. Yuri can feel the heat of his skin even with the steam in the air. “Don’t borrow tomorrow’s worries.”

“Easier said than done,” Yuri scoffs, “but— yeah. Yeah, I get it. I’ll try to relax.”

“Good.” Otabek squeezes his shoulder, and then, instead of letting go, brings his other hand up and turns Yuri slightly so he can grasp both of his shoulders. Then he squeezes again and starts massaging.

“Beka?”

“Shh, I’m helping.” Otabek moves even closer. His presence fills Yuri’s senses as his strong hands work tension out of Yuri’s neck and shoulders. “This is a vacation and you’re way too tense. _Relax.”_

Yuri tries to say something in reply, but at that moment Otabek works his thumb over a knot, pressing in until it suddenly releases, and all that escapes Yuri’s mouth is a pathetic moan.

“There?” Otabek asks serenely, like Yuri didn’t just make the most embarrassing noise. The pressure of his thumb gentles until he’s just stroking over the tender spot, soothing the ache and smoothing out the tension in the surrounding muscle.

“Uh huh,” Yuri manages. “Fuck, you’re good at that.”

“Thanks,” Otabek murmurs, and then he’s applying heavenly pressure again and Yuri isn’t able to pay attention to much beyond how Otabek’s hands are turning him to putty.

By the end of the massage, Yuri is limp and floaty-feeling, and Otabek is sporting a smug little smile, that tiny one that makes Yuri’s heart flutter, but even his heart is too relaxed right now to do more than flop once in his chest. He’s slumped in the water with Otabek’s hands holding his waist, practically in his lap, and every point of contact between their bodies feels like furnace heat but he’s too languorous to be turned on, which he didn’t know was even possible.

“You still alive there?” Otabek asks teasingly, squeezing gently on Yuri’s hips.

“Mmuh. Yeah. You— Beka, your hands are magic.”

“Come on, don’t fall asleep in the water. Let’s head inside.”

Otabek guides him bodily out of the hot spring, his touch slow and warm and… lingering, almost, though that part is probably wishful thinking. Yuri lets himself be guided, unusually docile under Otabek’s hands. They dress and head upstairs, slowly, Otabek never more than an arm’s length away, and Yuri is definitely not imagining that closeness.

There’s no real Moment, nothing deserving of capital letters, nothing Yuri can point to and say, “That’s what did it.” No, there’s just the two of them, still damp from the hot spring, behind a closed door with Yuuri’s old, empty desk and the yellow streetlights out the window, with Otabek tugging his sleep shirt on and walking toward the futon laid out next to the bed, and abruptly Yuri just can’t fucking _stand_ it anymore.

He doesn’t even realize what he’s doing until he has his lips shoved clumsily onto Otabek’s.

Yuri freezes. Otabek is frozen, too, eyes wide, halfway turned around. Their mouths are all smashed together, and it’s warm and wet but also kind of gross and Yuri has no finesse, shit, he has _zero fucking chill,_ this was the worst possible way he could have approached the issue.

He wasn’t going to fucking _do_ this. He thought he knew better. Now he's ruined everything. Otabek’s magic hands have hypnotized him until his hindbrain thought this was a good idea and he’s— fuck, Otabek is going to hate him. It’ll be just like those awful days when Otabek wouldn’t talk to him, except it’ll go on forever and ever and Yuri will never get to visit with Otabek again. Otabek will ignore him at competitions, won’t answer his texts, nothing. Shit.

He just screwed up _bad._

Otabek is still staring at him.

Yuri throws himself backward, one step, two, until Otabek’s shoulders are too far for Yuri to retain his nervous grip on them. That was phenomenally stupid.

That was his first kiss. What is wrong with him?

“Just—” he hisses, “just _say something.”_

“Yura.” The name is barely a whisper, but the sound still makes Yuri jump.

“Yeah?” Yuri asks, heart in his throat. His shoulders hunch inward, preparing for Otabek’s— disappointment, anger, who knows, but whatever he comes out with, Yuri will take it.

He can’t believe he just did that.

“Yura,” Otabek says again, and there’s something in his tone that Yuri can’t place and it’s making him even more uneasy.

“What?” he snaps.

“Will you…” Otabek raises one hand toward him. “Do that again?”

All the breath leaves Yuri’s body in a rush. “A— again? You want—?”

“Please,” Otabek says, and oh, it’s _longing_ in his voice. Yuri recognizes it now.

Otabek wants Yuri to kiss him again.

The thought won’t quite process. Yuri’s brain is trying desperately to reroute from ‘you just fucked up everything’ to ‘he likes you back’ and all that’s really happening is a lot of spinning wheels and smoke.

“Beka,” Yuri says, and his voice sounds foreign to himself, lost and desperate and needy.

Otabek steps closer and reaches out his hand to catch Yuri’s. “You want this, too,” he says, and it’s not quite a question but it sounds disbelieving.

“Of course I—” Yuri starts, indignant — how could Otabek think _anyone_ wouldn’t want him? — and then, “Too? You want—” but he’s cut off when Otabek’s lips descend onto his again.

It’s much better the second time around. For one, they’re both on board this time, so it’s not off-center. Otabek presses their lips together sweetly and Yuri returns the pressure, opening sightly, then more as the tip of Otabek’s tongue brushes his bottom lip, because _wow._ It’s like sparklers under his skin. Otabek moves closer, his other arm coming up to encircle Yuri’s waist, and Yuri, overwhelmed, takes that as permission to grab and hold; he gets one hand in Otabek’s hair — god, that tempting hair, the soft fuzz of the undercut and the long strands on top — and pulls him closer, his other hand fisting in Otabek’s shirt.

He’s kissing Otabek. He’s kissing him and Otabek is kissing back, holding him tight to his body, making little pleading noises into the scant space between them. The kiss is wet and lush and Yuri has no idea what he’s doing but it all feels good, so he keeps on.

He can hardly believe it. Guess he didn’t screw up everything after all.

Otabek is _kissing him back._

“Yura,” Otabek breathes when their mouths part slightly; he sounds awed, like Yuri is the one making all _his_ furtive fantasies come true instead of the other way around.

“Kiss me again,” Yuri demands, and Otabek smiles and does just that. His hands are warm through Yuri’s shirt, his body a furnace, and Yuri presses closer, chasing his tongue. Otabek makes a needy sound.

“Thought,” Yuri mumbles against Otabek’s mouth, still wrapped tight around him and kissing between words, _“fuck,_ thought I fucked up, thought you didn’t— thought you were gonna hate me—”

“Yura.” Otabek pulls back just enough to get his mouth free and looks at Yuri with a slight furrow between his brows. He cups Yuri’s cheek in one hand, soothing the fearful part of Yuri that reared its head when the kiss ended. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to kiss you?”

“I didn’t know you wanted to at all,” Yuri admits quietly. “I thought it was just me.”

“Yura. I like you so much.”

The cocky part of Yuri is crowing, _Of course you do, I’m amazing,_ but louder still is the insecurity repeating, _Really? You like me?_ again and again. Yuri tries to shut them both up.

“I like you, too,” he murmurs. “You’re— say it again?”

“I like you, Yura. I want to kiss you some more. Can I or can I not?”

God, that’s so like him. He’s even got that little stubborn furrow between his brows. Yuri grins and presses his mouth insistently to Otabek's again, and they pick up right where they left off, populating the long moments with lips and tongues and interactions thereof. Otabek's hands wander over Yuri's back in slow strokes, cup the sides of his jaw, squeeze him around the waist so he presses even closer against Otabek's chest. The fluttering in Yuri’s stomach has settled to a contented sort of giddiness. He runs his hands down Otabek’s neck and shoulders, smiling when the action makes Otabek hum with pleasure.

Eventually, they end up curled together on top of the blankets on Yuri’s borrowed bed, trading lazy kisses and enjoying being close. Kissing is fucking _great._ There’s so much more to it that just mouths. Their whole bodies are pressed together, knees and thighs and stomachs and chests, and their hands rove all over. Otabek plays with Yuri’s hair, which is not something Yuri had expected to enjoy as much as he does, and he also does this thing where his hands clench whenever Yuri sucks on his lower lip, and that’s amazing, too.

Yuri feels warm through and through, content as a cat with a whole can of tuna, laying along Otabek’s side with his head pillowed on one strong shoulder.

Something’s been bugging him for a while now, though.

“So why don’t you talk about dating?” Fuck, there were better ways to ask that. Less blunt. That’s not really Yuri’s style, though, so he lets the question stand.

Otabek scrunches in on himself as his cheeks pinken. “It’s an uncomfortable subject for me.”

“Oh. Um—”

“No, it’s okay. I mean, part of it is just that I've had a crush on you for a long time—”

“Really?”

Otabek gives him a flat look. “I know I was being obvious; you don't have to pretend like you didn’t notice.”

“No, really,” Yuri protests, “I had no idea. God, if I'd known, this all would have been way less uncomfortable. I thought you couldn't possibly be into me.” Otabek’s eyebrows draw in; Yuri flicks a hand at him. “No, stop, don't give me that look; I really didn't know. Oh god, so you were being _shy?_ That’s what all that refusal to talk was?”

Otabek’s blush darkens as he nods, but then he shakes his head and says, “That’s only part of it.”

“So what’s the rest?”

“The uncomfortable part.”

“Oh. Um, sorry, you don’t have to—”

“No, you should— you can know. I don’t mind telling you. It’s just… not something I talk about much.”

“Okay,” Yuri says, schooling himself to seriousness. “I’m listening.”

Otabek clears his throat, and he stares fixedly up at the ceiling instead of looking at Yuri, but he continues. “I’ve, um, had some bad relationships. My first boyfriend was… not great. He was manipulative in ways I didn’t recognize until after, but I was bowled over by him and I let him get away with a lot that I shouldn’t have.” Something about his tone makes Yuri think that’s just the tip of the iceberg, but he’s not going to press right now. He can be tactful when Otabek’s comfort is so obviously on the line.

Instead, he just hugs Otabek tighter. “I’m sorry.”

Otabek shrugs uncomfortably, though his grip around Yuri’s waist is tight. “It is what it is. I finally got away from him, but the girlfriend after him turned out to be with me for the fame, not for _me,_ and after that I kind of… gave up, I guess. Skating was more important, anyway. But I don’t really like talking about it.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Yuri says. “But hey, I know some good tricks for hiding a body if you need.”

_“Yura,”_ Otabek says, his tone too shocked and mirthful to be disapproving, which is what Yuri was going for. “How about you? The press has been quiet on your dating life, but…”

“That’s because I haven’t dated. No one was interesting enough. Except, well, you.”

Otabek makes a little disbelieving noise.

“What?” Yuri asks, defenses rising despite himself and turning his tone sharp.

“No, I just… me? I’m interesting enough for you?” He sounds baffled. When Yuri lifts his head in indignation, because of course Otabek is interesting and if anyone told him otherwise then they’ve got a skate blade coming for them, Otabek quickly continues, “I kind of can’t believe you’re here, that’s all.”

“Believe it,” Yuri says with conviction, and then lifts all the way up so he can kiss Otabek again. He’s going to convince Otabek of just how incredible he is and just how much Yuri wants to be with him if it takes all night.

Yuri wakes in the morning — after a short night of sleep since they stayed up for hours just making out on the bed; Yuri’s lips are sore and it’s incredible — to see Otabek already awake, propped up on his side on the futon and looking at his phone. He was privately a little relieved when Otabek suggested they sleep in separate beds still; the mattress is small for two people and he isn’t sure that waking up with your morning wood stabbing your brand-new boyfriend in the ass is the best way to start a relationship.

Maybe tonight, though, they can fall asleep together on the futon where there’s a little more room for sprawling. And then Yuri could lay all over him and feel his body heat and touch all that tempting skin. Maybe Otabek will let him.

“Morning,” Yuri mumbles, flopping one arm over the edge of the bed.

“Good morning, Yura,” Otabek replies as he lowers his phone, his voice warm. Then he sits up the rest of the way and leans closer. “Sleep well?”

He’s so gorgeous first thing in the morning. Yuri doesn’t want this trip to end, just so he can keep waking up to the sight of Otabek in rumpled pajamas. “Yeah,” he replies, “you?”

“Yeah.” Otabek nudges a little closer. Yuri takes the hint and leans in to kiss him.

“Mmm, I know I said it already,” he murmurs against Otabek’s lips, after a pleasant stretch spent getting reacquainted, “but I really like doing that.”

“Then keep doing it,” Otabek replies, and Yuri crawls straight out of bed and on top of Otabek, just like that.

They lose a large number of minutes to lazy kisses, mouths moving together in a dance of catch and slide that makes Yuri's head spin and his heart clench. Otabek's hands skim over his back, warm through his shirt, and Yuri presses closer, burrowing in with his legs threaded between Otabek’s. Now that he knows he's welcome, he's not going to waste any time. He teases the edge of Otabek’s lower lip with his tongue and Otabek immediately invites him in, warm and sweet, his arms tightening around Yuri’s middle.

Sleep-warm Otabek is a very comfortable body pillow, and he squirms delightfully when Yuri nibbles on his earlobe. The warmth and closeness has them both a little hard in their pyjama pants, which is all kinds of flattering and exciting, but contrary to what Yuri imagined this might be like, it doesn’t feel urgent. This low simmer of arousal is plenty all on its own.

Otabek captures his mouth again and Yuri loses himself in it.

A point slightly later in the morning, a point after they’ve kissed each other breathless and rumpled, finds Yuri donning his tiger shirt. He’s just feeling it today. It’s a tiger shirt day. The shirt is clean again; he took advantage of the laundry facilities since he’s not Victor and doesn’t pack clothes for an entire month on every trip.

When he turns around, he finds that Otabek agrees on the kind of day it is, because he’s wearing his tiger shirt too.

“I like it,” Otabek says guiltily when he catches Yuri staring, like he thinks Yuri is judging him for it or something, when the opposite is true. What had been a mild feeling of connection at wearing something Otabek owns the mate to swells into something vast and giddy at seeing Otabek actually _wearing_ the shirt.

God, Yuri likes him so much.

“You look good,” he manages around the feelings clogging his throat. Warm affection, and desire, and the cousins of the eels have arrived, too, making him squirm with the need to move or kiss Otabek or maybe drag him back to bed for a while so they can make out on top of the blankets some more.

Right then, his stomach growls.

“Come on,” Otabek says with a smile — everything must be visible on Yuri’s face, that’s the only thing that look can mean. “We should eat breakfast before your stomach eats _you.”_

“Fine, I guess hunger wins. Let’s go be fashionable together and make Vitya and Katsudon jealous.”

“Whatever you say, Yura,” Otabek replies warmly, crowding close behind him to herd him out the door and toward the stairs. His hand is warm and steady on the small of Yuri’s back. “Rink later? I had an idea about my program that I want your opinion on.”

“Of fucking course. Hey, do you mind if I post a selfie of us?”

> [photo posted to Yuri Plisetsky’s instagram: selfie showing Yuri Plisetsky and Otabek Altin with matching smirks, posing in matching shirts bearing a tiger’s roaring head on the chest]
> 
> **yuri+plisetsky** @otabekaltin is my boyfriend now, be jealous

They don’t even make it down two stairs before the replies start pouring in; most are from fans but some are people Yuri actually cares about. A little.

> **therealVictorNikiforov** Aaaa, congratulations Yurio!! )))) Absolutely precious!!
> 
> **yuri+plisetsky** BLOCKED
> 
> **yuri+plisetsky** also youre downstairs, asshole, why are you commenting
> 
> **therealVictorNikiforov** Because my darling Yuuri is ignoring me and I’m boooored
> 
> **milababicheva** congrats! you two are adorable
> 
> **yuri+plisetsky** dont call me adorable, hag
> 
> **yuri+plisetsky** …thanks tho

There’s a shutter noise, and then Otabek is smirking at him and tapping away on his phone. Yuri squawks. The shutter clicks again.

> [photo posted to Otabek Altin’s instagram: Yuri Plisetsky, red-faced, shoving his hand at the camera mid-laugh]
> 
> **otabekaltin** @therealVictorNikiforov @milababicheva He’s blushing
> 
> **milababicheva** How far the little kitten has come. To think he once asked me for advice on how to be friends
> 
> **therealVictorNikiforov** So cute, Yurio!! Thanks for this, Beka!! ))))) He turns so red
> 
> **yuri+plisetsky** IM BLOCKING ALL OF YOU
> 
> **milababicheva** …the lessons didn’t stick, I see.
> 
> **therealVictorNikiforov** Yuuri wants to know what you’re still doing upstairs? Breakfast is waiting!

Yuri doesn’t bother answering that one. Kissing Otabek on the stairs and then stealing his phone to avoid further incriminating photos is a much better use of his time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Hope you've enjoyed the ride; I know I have. :D There may or may not be a short, porny sequel in the works - no promises on completion date, but maybe keep an eye out if that sounds like your cup of tea.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!


End file.
